Approaching her 70th birthday, local musician Nancy Nash is retiring after more than four decades of teaching private lessons.
She has been teaching in Haines since her early 20s, when she and her husband first moved to town from Skagway when “Haines seemed like a metropolis,” Nash said.
For Nash, teaching was not an obvious career path, but music was her passion. “What was important was that I was a musician,” said Nash. Later she found she could, “facilitate someone’s desire to play something.”
In the 1970s she volunteered with Mayor Jan Hill developing the Head Start preschool program in Haines. At the time, Hill and Nash shared a mentor in Vivian Menaker, who taught children in a number of ways, including by playing ukulele to them with the book “American Folk Songs for Children” by Ruth Seeger. Nash took over playing ukulele to preschoolers and Haines parents convinced her to teach private music lessons.
Crystal Badgley, who has taken piano lessons with Nash for more than 20 years, said Nash promoted her identity as a musician and approached teaching in a collaborative way. “(This respect) kept me coming back to these lessons year after year so that I did improve. Nancy became my friend over all these years working together,” Badgley said.
“I love her, she’s amazing,” said 16-year-old Brennan Palmieri. Nash has taught Palmieri piano and voice lessons since he was seven years old. “She is always super responsive to how you’re feeling that day, and doesn’t try to pressure you with a lot of work. She is really motivating, but not overpowering,” he said.
Palmieri, who has won a number of awards in recent weeks at regional and state music competitions, said, “I’d credit 80 to 90 percent of my music success in high school to her. She has given me this great background, this great sense of music and pitch.”
The Nash home is infused with their love of music. Outside, visitors are greeted by a xylophone gate constructed by Dwight Nash, and inside, Nancy’s instruments fill rooms: two pianos, including an 1889 Steinway, flutes, an oboe, perhaps a dozen ukuleles, an auto-harp, a medieval instrument called a shawm. She’s a flutist in the Haines Marching Band, director of the Haines Women’s A Capella Choir, pianist at the Episcopal Church on Sundays, and a performer at funerals and weddings in town.
“That’s part of the beauty, that (music) is all mixed together,” said Nash.
Badgley remembered when Nash played during the funeral of a young music student who died in a canoeing accident. Badgley was in the audience before the service started, and recalled Nash playing something “weirdly upbeat” for a funeral. “She was playing from his piano music,” Badgley realized, “(Nash) had gotten his notebook of music from the family, music that he played with her.”
“Music is just one of the greatest unifiers,” said Nash.
For her 50-year high school reunion in North Dakota, Nash’s daughter, Amelia, said that Nash was shocked there was no musical activity going on, and organized a spontaneous singalong. “She’s done so much. She’s organized concerts, visiting musicians, music lessons. She just keeps doing it,” Amelia Nash said.
“Nancy has contributed to the community more than any of us know,” said Mayor Hill. “She contributes without getting much attention. I watched Nancy teach kids piano from the day that she got here. She’s one of those people who doesn’t broadcast what she’s done,” said Hill.
Hill recounted how, three years ago, she mused to her friend Nancy that the women’s choir seemed like a lot of fun. According to Hill, Nash responded, ‘All you gotta do is show up!’ which was just the push Hill needed. “The choir is one of the most fun things I do,” said Hill. “It’s a fun group of women from all walks of life and all political backgrounds who get together, and we’re just singing. We have that in common. We draw on the things we have in common rather than the things that tear us apart,” said Hill.
Nash went to Point Hope to help preserve Inupiat language by notating it into Episcopal church music, working closely with Inupiat elders for several days. In Juneau in 2014, she and her music partner, former concert master of the Juneau Symphony Steve Tada, played for the Empty Chair Memorial, commemorating Japanese-Alaskan internment. The performance had personal resonance for Tada, whose siblings and parents were held for four years in an Idaho internment camp.
At the memorial, he and Nash played a contemplative, well-known Japanese song, “The Sea in Springtime.” Playing at the memorial, said Tada, was “probably the coolest thing I’ve done since I’ve lived in Juneau for 28 years.” After their performance, the Empty Chair Committee received an $80,000 donation for a memorial from the National Park Service, Nash said.
Nash has called Tada her “perfect musical counterpart,” and playing with him, “the most satisfying, meaningful and exciting playing I’ve ever done, and audiences seem to agree.”
“She’s just such a renaissance person-she’s like Leonardo! She can do everything. I would be jealous if, well, I am jealous,” joked Tada.
Tada was hopeful that in Nash’s retirement they would have more time to play together. At the same time, Nash’s students feel the loss of their teacher.
Palmieri said he would have loved to finish his high school music career with Nash, and wondered if she might at least teach him during his senior year. Bagdley was happy for Nash and sad for herself. “I don’t know what I’ll do now, if I’ll keep really practicing a lot or not. I’m sorry to not have her as my teacher anymore. I will miss her,” said Bagdley.
“She’s not retiring,” said Nash’s daughter, Amelia. “She seems to just be wanting to explore creativity outside of Haines. She was tethered by her lesson schedule,” she said.
Nash-both a musician and an athlete-is now diligently training for the National Senior Games next month in Albuquerque, New Mexico. For the first time in her life, said Nash, she and her husband will be able to travel for long periods of time. They will visit their son in Utah and their daughter in New Zealand.