Nancy Blake Thompson:  

ALERT: I am not a Gold Club member - therefore, I cannot read names in the Guest Book or mssgs. left. Anyone wanting to contact me could try a search on Facebook for Nancy B. Thompson (fewer 'hits' than with just Nancy Thompson, no initial) - and I did add my maiden name as an 'alternate' (doesn't show up on my page, though): Nancy Blake After graduating from Neville High School in 1958 I went to what was then named Northeast Louisiana State College (now Univ. of Louisiana in Monroe, ULM) for a degree in art. In 1962-63, I was Miss Blake at LaGrange Senior High in Lake Charles, teaching art. Planning to get married the next winter, I moved to Baton Rouge and commuted to Gonzales for what I call "the year I didn't have better sense" - teaching 6th grade, all subjects, on a temporary certificate. I needed a job and they needed teachers. I married Bill Thompson, from Rayville, in January 1964. We had met at Northeast three years before. Since I didn't want to work on an elementary educ. degree, I took a job at LSU in the summer of 1964, as a secretary in the office of Dean Choppin. Bill had finished a masters degree in library science and started work on an English literature degree. We moved to Kingsville TX in August 1965 where Bill was a librarian at Texas A&I. While in Texas we had two children: Dennis, in 1966, and Amy, in 1968. I did substitute teaching for a year - everything from math, to gym, to choir - before teaching elementary school art between two schools, McRoberts (2 days a week) and Kleberg (3 days) for a year. After 3 1/2 years there, we turned off the air-conditioner in Kingsville on Dec. 19 and went home to Rayville and Sterlington for the holidays. We had packed everything up and the neighbors oversaw the movers picking it up. January 1969: We moved to Amherst in Western Massachusetts - on the heels of a major snow storm. Bill was hired as the Gov't. Documents Librarian at the University. Amherst is a small town with three campuses - UMass, Amherst College, and Hampshire College - and a 5-college working relationship with Smith College nine miles away in Northampton and Mount Holyoke College about nine miles away in South Hadley. All this is plunked down in a rural, agricultural area of the state (80/+ miles west of Boston). When our youngest started nursery school I began working at UMass part-time. "I can come in at 9:00 and have to leave by 2:00. What have you got?" I was a part-time secretary for so many years that I got used to the schedule and kept it up til I retired 30 years later. At UMass, I worked mostly on research grant monies for five years in four different offices and in Staff Training & Development for eight years. While at UMass, I took advantage of tuition waivers, first as a spouse, then, as an employee, and earned a masters d...Expand for more