Nancy Archer Mansell
1923 – 2010
Nancy was born December 4, 1923 in Cody, Wyoming, to Roy Archer and Mildred Siggins Archer. A family story, perhaps apocryphal, says that her father drove cross-state in the dead of winter to add the middle name “Nancy” to her birth certificate so that she would not go through life with the sole name her mother had chosen, “Geraldine.” Nancy graduated as valedictorian of the Cody High School class of 1941, and headed, at her father’s urging, to the University of Washington, from which she graduated in 1946, Phi Beta Kappa, with a B.A. in Economics and Business and the Alumnae Prize of 1943 from Beta Gamma Sigma, the international honor society for the study of business.Nancy and her first husband, John Crosetto, Jr., moved to Mercer Island, Washington in 1949. When her marriage ended in divorce, she became office manager of the island’s Water District, a position she held until her second marriage, to Clarke (Bud) Mansell, in 1973. Nancy and Bud spent the first year of their marriage in Kotzebue, Alaska, north of the Arctic Circle, living in a house on stilts above the Bering Strait. They then moved to Nome, and on to Fairbanks, where both worked for the University of Alaska and Nancy maintained a private practice in tax preparation. During their long marriage they traveled the Alcan Highway many times, and, every three years, attended reunions of the 10th Mountain Division (Bud’s outfit in World War II) throughout the United States and once in Italy. Nancy’s favorite trip was one which took them to the East coast, visiting friends all across the country and arriving in New England in time for the fall leaves. After Bud’s death in 2001, Nancy devoted two years, with the help of Bud’s friends, to organizing his massive collection of Lionel model trains before she moved, with her beloved poodle Taku, back to the Seattle area, to spend the final years of her life closer to her children. After a long illness, she passed away peacefully on August 30,2010. Nancy is survived by the children of her first marriage: Cathryn Palmer (Greg), Maralyn Crosetto (Tommy Smith), and Tony Crosetto (Sharon), and by five grandchildren. She is also survived by her three stepchildren: Laura Clements, James Mansell, and David Mansell, and their spouses and children.Nancy was a strong woman, who raised her three children (mostly as a single mother, before that status was common) with courage, devotion, and a sense of adventure. She loved to ski, and thought nothing (despite her dubious sense of direction) of driving herself and her children over slick roads from Mercer Island to Sun Valley. She and Bud reveled in being longtime Alaska residents, and enjoyed hosting in return the many friends they had visited during their travels. In Alaska Nancy found again the smaller-town friendliness she had enjoyed as a girl growing up in Cody and as a young wife on Mercer Island. It was the kind of setting she liked and enlivened with her capable mind and spirited personality. Her family and friends will miss her.
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