Christie Catherine Nichols

1952 - 2013

Christie Catherine Nichols
January 10, 1952 - December 13, 2013
Resident of Santa Cruz
Christie Nichols, daughter of actor Robert Nichols and costumer Jennifer Napier Nichols was born in Hollywood California, and grew up in Laurel Canyon, the San Fernando Valley, and London, England for five years, and in a house overlooking the ocean in Pacific Palisades. She received her BA with honors at UC Santa Cruz in 1973. Christie lived in Germany and San Diego and Santa Cruz, where she was one of the volunteers who founded Women's Crises Support. Her early jobs included agricultural field laborer, swimming teacher, janitor, bikini model, truck loader, and veterinary's assistant and typing shipbuilding contracts in Portuguese. She completed her Masters in Social Work at the University of Connecticut in 1983, with a year of her post-graduate training for licensure in psychotherapy at a Yale collaborative. Homesick for California, Christie moved to Point Reyes Station and then to San Francisco before returning to Santa Cruz in 2007 to reunite with the on-again love of her life since she was nineteen. Christie poured her heart and soul and intellect into social work, psychotherapy and teaching. She was deeply grateful to her much-valued clients and students for their generous sharing of more about humanity, courage, humor and resilience than in academic settings, where Christie was dedicated to high standards and did well. In San Francisco, she served on advisory boards to the American Bar Association, the Probate Court, a neighborhood association, and as president of the National Association of Social Workers unit in San Francisco for several years. She supervised social work interns from Smith, Berkeley, SF State and San Jose State and taught seminars for non-profit mental health, public health, and social service organizations. Christie was especially proud of her accomplishments during her years working for the Healthcare for Homeless Vets program of the Dept. of Veterans' Affairs, in San Francisco. In recent years she worked as a Therapist/Mental Health Specialist for the Mental Health Unit of the County of Santa Cruz Health Services Agency.
Christie co-existed with disfiguring and debilitating spindle cell cancer, which first attacked when she was thirty seven, and which she was able to minimize limiting her life as much as possible. These last few years, she said she "languorously lounged around against cancer". As well as her professional devotion, Christie loved yoga and cooking and birding and sea glass and sewing and gardening and reading and Scrabble and theater and travel and decorating and even cleaning the house. One major regret was that all her moves meant that she lost time and touch with friends and family who were dear to her.
She did not want a memorial service. She donated her body to medical research. Christie asks that to remember her, do something especially lovely for some thing and/or with someone, who could be yourself, or Hospice of Santa Cruz, or The Pacific Cultural Center, or the Mental Health Clients Action Network, or any of your favorites. Christie will be with you in spirit. Christie is survived by her mother Jennifer Nichols; her brother David Nichols and his family; her husband, Ed Jameyson, and their four cats -Corina, Junior, Phoebe, & Tigger Belle.
Christie will be remembered by her family, friends, and clients for her lively wit as well as her compassion and enormous capacity for empathy and love.