Frances (Fran) Nye, 90, died on November 23, 2013, from conditions associated with chronic and progressive heart and lung disease. Born on Septem-ber 17, 1923, in Hartford, Connecticut, Fran grew up on her grandparents' farm in New Canaan with her parents and four siblings. She received a B.A. from Smith College in 1944 and an M.D. from Cornell Medical School (NYC) in 1947. During her residency at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, New York, Fran met and married fellow resident Robert (Bob) Nye, forming a 64-year partnership that lasted until Robert's death in 2012. Fran will be remembered for her strong sense of social justice and a willingness to dig in and do what needed to be done. It was no sur-prise to those who knew her that she didn't put down her splitting maul until after she was 80.
In 1956, Fran and Bob moved with their boys 5, 3, and 2-years old to their Church Street home in Nor-wich, where they lived the rest of their lives. In 1959, Fran joined the fledgling Department of Psychiatry at Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital, matching her work hours to the boys' school hours. In 1972, she transferred to the VA hospital in White River Junction, helping Vietnam veterans with their reentry, advocat-ing for community mental health, and serving on boards addressing alcoholism treatment at local, statewide, and national levels.
Fran retired from the VA in 1985 and embarked upon a second volunteer career in social justice and peace advocacy. She made several trips to Nicaragua and one to South Africa with groups such as Witness for Peace, traveling deep into war-torn and unstable regions where the presence of Americans prevented atrocities. She and Bob became members of the Iona Community, a peace-advocacy community based out of the reconstructed 6th-Century abbey in Scotland, and their home on Church Street became a Columban house, a local place for that community to gather. Fran was among the group that brought one of the first resolutions before the UCC regional organization in support of GLBT rights. Fran and Bob also grounded their concern for people and the world by opening their home for months and years, to young men and women in need of respite from myriad diffi-culties, some personal, some because of forced separa-tion from family and homeland. These people, and countless others over time, formed a large and diverse extended family.
Fran and Bob were among those who advocated successfully for the creation of the Dresden Interstate School District. Fran helped establish the library at the Marion Cross Elementary School, at which she volunteered for over 50 years. She was also a regular volunteer at the Upper Valley Haven. She has been a stalwart member of the UCC Church next door to their home, valuing it most as a place of community, and as a springboard for local, regional and global social jus-tice activities.
Fran was an avid gardener, and put up most of the family's winter vegetables for decades. She had a do-it-yourself, can-fix-anything attitude and the requisite skills to support that attitude. She had a deep love of the outdoors grounded in her childhood with her father, and shared that love with her family through frequent camping trips. The south shore of Little Deer Island in Maine became a touchstone and grounding point. In later life she learned the joy of warm-water snorkeling, and yearned to swim with dolphins. She was a voracious reader of non-fiction, and shared the understanding and deep knowledge she thus gained.
Family members she leaves behind are son David, his partner Michaelene (Ontko) and their children Eric, Matthew, Jennifer, Allison and Emily of Eau Claire, Wisconsin; son Christopher, his partner Anna Plager and their children Benjamin and Amelia of Fair-banks, Alaska; and son Peter and his partner Jamie Marks of Berkeley, California. Fran leaves behind her siblings, Ellen Harriet Weiss, Peggy Poffenberger, Linda Terriberry, and Walter Thomsen, and their chil-dren, grandchildren and great grandchildren.
A memorial service will held be held on Sunday, December 15, at 2:00pm at the Norwich Congrega-tional Church.