Sweet Nancy, the lovely girl next door

Another chapter from "When I'm 64" ...

BROWN-EYED GIRL

Nancy Abt wasn’t a flashy blonde, but she was pretty, friendly and vivacious – the classic 'girl next door’ that everyone liked and everyone remembers.

If members of Woodson’s Class of ’67 were to think back and reminisce about the classically beautiful girls in our class, Nancy Abt might not have been the first to come to mind.

Nancy Abt

She didn’t have the overwhelming, in-your-face beauty of the blondes like Karen Theurer or Janet Thornton, but Abt was pretty and witty and outgoing. She was the girl next door, and 25 years earlier, hers would have been the picture thousands of young soldiers carried with them at places like Guadalcanal, El Alamein and Normandy to remind them why they were fighting.

If that seems a little too idealized, you had to have known her. She was pleasant to everyone, and her smile literally glowed. No one who remembers her would consider her mean, stuck-up or full of herself. In fact, you’ll know all you need to know about her just by hearing how she got to school.

“We lived in a house in Somerset (behind the school) and I walked to school, most days with Stacy DeLano,” she said. “Stacy was tall and lean and smart, I was short and stout and out for a fun day. Stacy never held that against me, bless her heart.”

Short? Maybe.

Stout? Never.

Woodson was never the type of school where stout girls were included in the few juniors selected for the queen’s court at the Sweetheart Dance, and I doubt there were many schools anywhere in the fall of 1966 that picked a stout girl as Homecoming Queen.

It was quite an accomplishment for a girl who had only been at Woodson for a little more than a year.

“My father was in the Army, so we moved around a lot,” Abt said. “I remember very vividly starting at Woodson my junior year. That was also the first year Fairfax County schools were integrated. I didn’t know why there was such hoopla about it, but to my recollection it happened without incident.

“In fact I felt sorry for the black kids because they were so few. I made it my goal to befriend a very shy black girl in my typing class. Rather than try to excel in typing, I tried to make Jessie laugh. We became fast friends and when I graduated she gave me a bracelet that I still wear.”

Sons and daughters of military families – military brats, they were called – found themselves adjusting to new situations every two or three years. The ones who were outgoing enough knew how to succeed.

They got involved.

“Being that I was new at the school and didn’t know a soul, I decided to try out for intramurals and organizations in order to meet people,” Abt said. “I guess you noticed my goal wasn’t to be invited to the National Honor Society!”

The tryouts weren’t all successful.

She tried out for basketball and “got run over.”

She tried out for softball and ended up with “bruised legs and the honor of being voted water girl for the team.”

She tried out for the majorettes and ended up with “bruises everywhere and a plastered smile on my face (very important during tryouts).”

“Needless to say, I didn’t make any team,” Abt said. “But I did meet a lot of kids and had a great time just trying.”

***

In one respect, Nancy had a lot in common with many of her classmates. But in another, she was very different. In a state that had been consumed by racial problems, where many of her classmates had grown up thinking of things in terms of black and white and where racial slurs could still be heard in the halls, she didn’t get it.

“I never really figured out the race riot thing, because I didn’t even think about races and differences,” Abt said. “I do know that it was an integral part of the adjustments our generation had to make.”

It meant a lot to quite a few people, but it helped that many of us hadn’t grown up in Virginia, and 11 years after the Supreme Court’s Brown decision, there were plenty of people like Abt who didn’t think it should be a big deal.

It helped that two of the black students – Walter Hawkins and Tyrone Brandon – were part of the first Woodson basketball team ever to make it to the state tournament in Charlottesville. And that in the fall of ’66, Jimmy Jukes was a powerful, talented running back on the Cavaliers’ first really successful football team.

Mostly, though, it was people like Nancy Abt who kept the transition peaceful by refusing to think of it as a big deal. They were, to mangle a saying of the time, part of the solution by not being part of the problem.

Stacy DeLano started at Woodson at the same time as Abt. She had spent her first two years of high school in Thailand and was worried about fitting in.

“I was terribly anxious to make a good impression on the couple thousand students at WTW,” she said. “I’m sure I was a lot more insecure than Nancy. She was from the very moment I met her warm, bubbly, super-friendly. She didn’t seem to be at all concerned that we might be run over by crowds of kids who couldn’t care less about us. That we might say the wrong thing, use a hideously outdated slang word (coming from overseas where American culture arrived six months late.

"I was terrified of being exposed as a fraud), wear the wrong loafers, brand name sweater, or even put our circle pins on the wrong side. Were you a virgin if you wore one in the middle … or was it on the right? Why were those things so important in fall 1965?”

For whatever reason, it turned out all right for both of them.

“Somehow, Nancy blended right in, with me trailing behind her, and made instant friends with all the ‘right’ groups,” DeLano said. “It was her infectious laugh, but more importantly, her sincerity, that appealed to so many of the kids. I remember her dimples, her thick, long, straight brown hair (I was forever ironing or putting straightening chemicals on mine to get the same effect). When she carried her books, they seemed almost to overwhelm her, she was so petite. I wanted to be just like her.”

And in the fall of our senior year, there were probably hundreds of girls at Woodson who wished they were her when Abt was voted Homecoming Queen. Where memory fails, the yearbook exists to remind us how lovely she looked that night, photographed with her dazzling smile.

“Nancy Abt was the perfect Homecoming Queen,” DeLano said. “I’m not being facetious.”

More than forty years later, her own memories of the experience are rather vague. She remembers being surprised – and honored – to have been selected, and she seems to recall that she hadn’t even had a date for the dance.

“It was the furthest thing from my mind since I was fairly new to the school, in comparison to the other girls in our class,” Abt said. “I was disappointed that I had to give the crown back. I was told the class didn’t have the money to buy a new one for each year. Truly, my memory is quite vague on specifics there. Thank goodness for yearbook pictures.”

One thing Abt remembers about high school is that she wasn’t much of a student. She says she has no particular memories of good or bad teachers, although she did form a lifelong friendship with her guidance counselor, Tucker Winn, who talked her into going to college.

“If it weren’t for Tucker and her insightful view of me, I don’t quite know where I would have ended up,” Abt said. “With her help, I did get accepted at Virginia Tech, graduated with a degree (no small feat) and made a smooth journey into adulthood. Tucker was very much a part of my life until her demise.

“My goals were uncomplicated ones – get a degree, work a short while, get married and have a family.”

If you’re beginning to think she was a throwback to the ‘40s or ‘50s, you might not be far wrong. DeLano remembers her friend was being different from most of the other people she knew.

“Nancy was extremely close to her parents,” she said. “That was probably rare for those days. She was also a real straight arrow. She seemed to be able to balance being popular with being respected, and she never offended anyone.”

Abt considered herself “too self-absorbed” to be affected much by world events during her high school years, although as part of a military family she was certainly aware of what was happening in Vietnam.

Other than a few of the more daring members of our class, the drug scene touched very few of us until at least our college years.

“I didn’t feel it had much bearing at the time in our school,” Abt said. “I do remember going to Georgetown on dates and trying to order beer while underage. That was about as risky as I got and what fun it was!”

She also remembers that age-old teen ritual of getting her driver’s license. “Errol Aboe tried to increase my expertise by teaching me how to drive a manual in his VW bug going down Braddock Road,” she said. “Something sure smelled like it was burning! It turned out to be a short lesson in shifting and I was delegated back to the family car, known as The Tank.”

***

Growing up wasn’t something Abt welcomed. Even when she was 17, she viewed her parents as being forever old. The thought of being a parent herself – and eventually even a grandparent – was somewhere out beyond reality.

After college, she married and she and her husband settled in Alexandria, where he had his own consulting firm. They raised two daughters – Kristin and Keri – and at some point, she came to a realization.

“As I approached 60, I began to compare my children’s milestones with my own,” she said. “I realized that they correlated precisely. What an eye opener that was. All of a sudden I began to realize that my parents weren’t that old back then. In fact, they were relatively young.

“Now I am a grandmother of two and I still compare the ages/stages bit. It fascinates me how young I am.”

As with many baby boomers, Nancy Abt said she resisted “growing up.” Then in her mid fifties, “life jumped up and smacked me in the face.” Things happened and she realized she either had to stand up and deal with them or have her children parent her.

“I lost the two people who were most near and dear to me, my parents,” she said. “I had never lost anyone before that meant so much. I had cared for my parents during their years of ill health and was there with them to the end. It is still hard to deal with their absence.

“They built a home that attached to ours by way of a garage. I saw them every day for over 12 years. At the same time that my parents’ health became terminal, my husband became suddenly gravely ill. It all seemed too much to bear and I leaned on my children tremendously until I figured out that it was time to grow up.”

Her husband had mylodysblastic syndrome, but received a bone marrow transplant from his younger daughter and has been in remission now for four years.

“He is doing famously,” Nancy said. “And we are both enjoying our two grandsons immensely. Yes, I have grown up finally and I’m enjoying it.”

Growing up entailed some strange twists and turns. By her own admission, Nancy wanted a cushy life as a suburban wife – “girlfriends, shopping, bridge and kids.” But when Jim sold his consulting firm and retired, he decided he wanted to buy a farm and move there.

If you think it sounds a little bit like “Green Acres” – darling I love you but give me the Georgetown shops – you don’t know Nancy Abt. Remember, this was the girl who got run over trying out for basketball, who wound up with bruised legs trying out for softball and got bruised legs and that plastered smile when she decided she wanted to be a majorette.

She was game.

“I had no idea what I was getting into,” she said. “So I said sure.”

They loaded up the truck and they moved to the Virginia hunt country, where they settled with their two girls – 11 and 10 at the time – on a rundown farm. Nancy and her husband raised their daughters and put together a cow/calf operation of Angus beef. Until he got sick, her husband was also breeding quarter horses.

Currently they have about 160 head of cattle, although they have scaled back their horse operation from 13 to six. The horses are strictly for pleasure now, and they ride them all around the farm.

Self-deprecating as ever, Nancy says she no longer rides because “I realize the horse is too smart for me.”

Her daughters are grown now, although both remain close to their parents. Kristin is married to a bovine veterinarian she met while at Virginia Tech. They live in the Shenandoah Valley, about an hour away, and visit on weekends to help manage the farm.

Keri lives in Reston and works for a major corporation. She too visits and helps out some weekends.

“On these cold, windy, dreary days, you will find my husband and me in the tractor, unrolling hay for the cows,” Nancy said. “We’ll be tagging newborn calves, feeding the horses and mending fences. Who would have thought it?”

Living in the country and keeping track of 160 cows and six horses makes it difficult to keep track of high school classmates, and Nancy cherishes the help she has received from a couple of close friends.

“Stacy DeLano, bless her heart, took it upon herself to get in touch with me when she began working at Randolph Macon in Lynchburg.” She said. “She has visited on occasion and kept me abreast of some goings on. And dear Dale Morgan is the glue that has kept things all together for our class. How does she do it?

“It truly has been great reading about friends from high school and remembering friends from there, that at the time, I thought I would never forget, or never want to lose touch. It’s all part of the fantasy of life, I guess.”