Nancy C. Nolan

Nancy Chamberlin Nolan, a World War II Navy nurse, wife and the matriarch of six sturdy and 

successful families, died peacefully at her son’s house in Mandeville Tuesday, surrounded by family. 

She was 101 years old. For more than a century, Nancy Nolan was a loving wife, a generous friend and 

a surrogate mother to dozens of children who roared in and out of her care. For decades she hosted 

waves of child-visitors invited for week-long visits to a summer camp near Waveland, MS. She fed 

them, cleansed minor wounds and kept every one of them from drowning. Later in life Nancy was a 

hospice volunteer, philanthropist, tennis enthusiast, a daily communicant and regular volunteer at St. 

Andrew the Apostle Catholic church. Her life was a master class in two virtues not often seen together: 

optimism and grit. Born in Painesville, Ohio, in 1922, Nancy’s emotional gyroscope was forged during 

the Depression. Her experience of everyday life among struggling families in small-town Ohio, where 

people made do without complaint, deeply shaped her. In partnership with her husband, Dr. A.W. 

Nolan, demonstrations of generosity, faith and quiet fortitude were the lessons she fed her family. All 

her life she exuded a steady warmth and delighted in the company of other people. At the close of 

World War II, as a Navy nurse in Virginia, Nancy met Al Nolan, a young Navy dentist. They married, 

moved to his native Algiers and across 63 years of marriage built a boisterous, welcoming household 

that eventually embraced six children, innumerable friends, in-laws, cousins, nieces, nephews, 

neighbors, assorted vendors, clergy and almost anyone who encountered the gravitational field of the 

family. Yet she was hardwired with a native toughness, both mental and physical. Her Christian faith – 

Catholic, grafted onto Methodist roots – ran broad and deep. She could not be capsized by misfortune. 

In her last years she was nourished by a wide circle of friends and delighted in weekly group breakfasts 

at Toute de Suite Cafe on Algiers Point, even as she accepted her growing limitations. She was the 

same from beginning to end: a beacon of grace, intelligence, warmth, love and steady, unflinching 

courage. There was only one of her.

She is survived by a daughter: Barbara Bolling (John) of Houston, TX; by five sons: Bruce (Emily) of 

Houston; Rick (Julie) and Lewis (Alicia) of Mandeville; Dr. Patrick (Lisa) of Plymouth, MI, and Neal 

(Lynn) of Austin, TX; by 16 grandchildren and 20 great-grandchildren.

Visitation will be Monday at 11 a.m. at Our Lady of the Lake Catholic Church in Mandeville, followed 

by Mass at noon. A private interment will follow on Tuesday.

In lieu of flowers, Nancy asks for donations to St. Ann Catholic Church, 5858 Lower Bay Road, Bay 

Saint Louis MS 39520.