Nancy Keeney Forster

Nancy Keeney Forster Nancy Forster, educator, author, community builder and life long companion to her husband diplomat Clifton Forster, died in her home in Belvedere on November 13, 2013. She was 85 years old. Born in 1928 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to Roger B. Keeney and Catherine Baldwin Keeney, Nancy attended the Baldwin School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and graduated from Stanford University in the class of 1950. In 1949 Nancy married Clifton Forster, born and raised in the Philippines. That year they moved to the Philippines to work in the US Information Agency. In 1953 the couple relocated to Japan, where Clifton managed American Cultural Centers for three decades. They also held posts in Burma, Washington, and Israel. With a focus on education, Nancy's lifetime work with her husband was to build understanding between cultures. She taught world history in international schools from the early-1960s until the mid-1990s. In the 1970s Nancy became involved with the International Baccalaureate (IB), now a worldwide network of advanced bilingual international high schools. In 1986 she started the first IB school in Hawaii. After moving from Hawaii to Tiburon in 1994, Nancy became the founding director of the California Organization of World IB schools. She was a founder of Marin Villages, a volunteer service for home-based seniors in Marin County. This August, she received the first Nancy Forster Spirit of Marin Village Award for her volunteer service. She was also devoted to St. Stephens Episcopal Church and was a member of the vestry. At the age of 80 Nancy started her authorial career. Her first publication, Encounters: A Lifetime Spent Crossing Cultural Frontiers (2008), tells the story of her husband's wartime imprisonment by the Japanese and details over a half-century of their life together. In 2011, she co-edited Journeys in Learning Across Frontiers, a compilation of student and teacher testimonies from around the world about the impact of their time in IB schools. Her passion for cooking and entertaining is captured in her third and last book, A Culinary Journey: Recipes and Reminiscences of an American Diplomat's Wife (2013). Nancy is survived by her brother Roddy, three children, Thomas, Cindy and Douglas, nephew Charles, niece Karen, and five grandchildren, Nathan, Taylor, Makala, Wyn and Callum. Gifts in memory of Nancy may be made to Marin Villages, 930 Tamalpais Avenue, San Rafael, CA 94901 (www.marinvillages.org), or Academia Semillas Del Pueblo School (www.dignidad.org), 4970 Huntington Dr. S, Los Angeles, CA 90032. A public memorial service for Nancy will be held at 11:00AM on December 16, followed by a reception at St. Stephens Episcopal Church in Belvedere, California.