Nancy Truitt Arce

1930 - 2016

Nancy Truitt Arce
August 12, 1930 – December 7, 2016
Nancy Arce, who passed away at Mt. San Antonio Gardens on December 7, 2017, moved to Claremont in 1956 when her husband Bill joined the Athletic Department at Pomona College and shortly after became the founding Athletic Director at Claremont Men's College. Nancy was born in Texas and grew up in Oakland. At just 16, she went to Stanford University where Nancy studied to become a teacher, and met her future husband, a returned soldier.
Three areas meant much for Nancy's life; her family, her career in education and her wide range of public service activities.
Nancy and Bill married in 1950 and a year later she graduated cum laude from Stanford and took a job as a teacher. She had a long and distinguished career as a teacher in Claremont. She started as a substitute teacher but found her real interest in teaching learning-disabled students. She earned a Masters in Special Education at Cal State San Bernardino and ended up working for 25 years, with generations of young students at El Roble and La Puerta Junior High Schools, through the 70s and 80s. She quickly realized the importance of a student's whole support system in learning success. Nancy was not one to let a good idea drop. So, in 1985 she developed a program called Supportive Parents Are Necessary (SPAN) to help parents understand how best to support their special needs children. For the next 10 years, Nancy ran this program for the Claremont United School District.
Meanwhile, Nancy's family grew, with a son, Jim in 1953, a daughter, Judy in 1955 and a son, Jeff in 1958. Bill's career also took off, but in an unusual direction as he began to combine his job at CMC with a role that he created for himself to build links with people overseas through working with baseball. In 1961, the Arce family moved to the Netherlands for 18 months when Bill was hired to work with and improve the developing Dutch baseball program. Nancy took it all in stride living in a small village, and learning to speak Dutch. Nancy had a gift for making and keeping friends, and several people became life-long friends that they visited many, many times in the coming years.
Over the following decades, Nancy supported Bill as he "took baseball to the world". In 1982, even before official diplomatic relations had been established, they spent some cold winter months in Kunming, China at the invitation of the Chinese government. Bill taught the "Little Red Book (of Baseball)" to Chinese coaches, while Nancy shared her knowledge of special education and taught English. This was the first of 5 visits to China through the 80s and 90s. Over the next decades, in the many, many countries that she visited with Bill and baseball, Nancy created a role for herself to explore the role of women in these different countries and cultures. Her interviews led to many friendships and often to presentations to societies.
Even with all the work and travels that Nancy did in supporting Bill and in raising their three children, she still found time to be very active in the Claremont community. She was president of the Claremont Presbyterian Women's Association, active in the Campus Women's association becoming Treasurer and then President. At just 30 years old, she became the second woman to be an Elder in the Claremont Presbyterian Church, a post she held several times. She started the first Mission Fair, to inform the community about mission activities in the world. She was president of the Parent Faculty Associations for 3 different schools. For 10 years, Nancy was Chairman of the Board for Recording For The Blind And Dyslexic / Learning Ally, where she also exhibited her fundraising skills by organizing and leading their annual art auction fund-raiser for 20 years. She was active in PEO. Nancy also led a Christian Meditation group for many years at Mount San Antonio Gardens, where she and Bill lived.
Nancy said goodbye to Bill earlier this year when he passed away on March 7, 2016. Her surviving family is happy that Bill and Nancy can be together again, but she will still be sadly missed by her many friends in Claremont, her sister Jody Stringer, her brother Ed Truitt, and her two sons and daughter, nine grandchildren and five great grandchildren.
A service will be held at 2pm on January 4, 2017 at Claremont Presbyterian Church. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations to the William B Arce Scholarship Fund c/o Office of Development, Claremont McKenna College, 400 N. Claremont Blvd. Claremont CA 91711, (online.cmc.edu/ArceGiftPage) or the Mt. San Antonio Gardens Scholarship Fund, c/o Mt San Antonio Gardens, Att: Accounting Dept. 900 E. Harrison Ave. Pomona, CA 91767.