Parishioner Profiles by Nancy Marlowe
Nancy Reid is the breathlessly busy woman who sees that receptions at All Souls are elegant affairs, be they for sad or happy occasions. She is the one who makes the canapés and cookies appear.
“Ted Ahl provides and arranges the roses,” Nancy said. “I just gratefully accept and admire them!!” She added that sexton David Fortney “is so wonderfully helpful.”
Nancy makes it look easy. Parishioners generously provide the food, she said, “and there is always more food than consumed and such a variety.” Donated food is “a lovely gift people can give each other and the church.” Nancy said. “You cannot have too many deviled eggs.”
A road-trip cyclist, walker in all weathers and teacher at all levels of education; Nancy Reid is a long-time member of All Souls. “There is something in that church that wraps around you and you know you are home.” She cited “the music and Mike Stevenson” as specifics that drew her into All Souls. Mike asked her to be on the Christian Education committee. She served on the Christian Ed. Commission for a dozen years and found it great fun.
“My big coup was paid nursery aides,” she said. These persons freed parents from the certainty that if they showed up at church with a young child, they would be put on nursery duty. Reid also has served on the vestry “a number of times.”
Nancy was born in Gardner, Mass., and is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts. “I was an English major, which prepares you to do nothing except write the great American novel,’’ she laughed.
About this time, her father, an executive with Heywood Wakefield Furniture, was transferred to Newport, Tenn. Her mother, observing opportunities there for her post-grad daughter, asked the life-changing question, “Nancy, how would you like to teach?”
Nancy applied and was hired sight-unseen to teach 8th grade in the era of school integration. “It was the best first experience possible; I was terrified, but I enjoyed it.”
University of Tennessee law graduate Frank Graham appeared on the scene. He and Nancy were married and moved to Knoxville. Frank became a member of the Army’s judge advocate general’s court. The couple and their infant son Parry were sent to Okinawa. “It was a wonderful place to go,” said Nancy. Their son Bryan was born on the Pacific island.
The next assignment was Germany. “A great experience.”
The family moved to Asheville— “the perfect place”—in 1977.
“I’ve taught in all levels of education,” Nancy said, “and loved every minute of it. Currently she has the “dream job” of teaching in the Georgetown County Schools of South Carolina for six months a year. She teaches in the literacy program in middle and high schools.
As a bonus to her enjoyment of the classroom, students and curriculum, she lives in a beach house in Debordieu, in the midst of the beach resort area so beloved by mountain folk.
Her sons Parry, a middle school principal, and Bryan, a dentist, each have two children. When the four children were toddlers Nancy dropped everything, moved to Cary, rented a house and took care of her grandchildren for a year… “one wonderful year!”
“I still grandparent as often as I can,” she said. Of course, she loves every minute of it.