Nancy L. Westbrook

Nancy L. Westbrook May 22, 1922 – December 11, 2011 Nancy Lee (Gillam) Westbrook, a resident of Grand Junction for nearly 60 years, died peacefully on Sunday, December 11. Mother, mother-in-law, grandmother, great-grandmother, and friend to dozens, her warm smile and unstinting compassion will be missed by all. Nancy was born in Austin, Minnesota on May 22, 1922, the only daughter of four children born to Clarence G. and Lyda Lee (King) Gillam, a granddaughter of Minnesota settlers John Henry and Eliza Cornelia (Selts) King. She came of age during the Great Depression and graduated from Austin High School in 1940. Two years of higher education followed, at her beloved Carleton College and the University of Minnesota, before she had to abandon her dreams of a degree in order that her strapped parents could send her younger brother to school. Working during high school and college for the hometown Hormel Meat Co., she remained a fiercely loyal consumer of Hormel products throughout her life. Like many Americans of her generation, Nancy's life was profoundly shaped by World War II. She trained as a medical secretary and moved to Santa Maria, California to participate in the war effort at the Army Air Corps Hospital there. It was here that she met James C. Westbrook, an Air Force soldier himself transplanted to California by way of Arkansas and service in the northeastern reaches of the Pacific War in the Aleutians. Nancy and Jim were married in her home town of Austin, Minnesota on December 28, 1946. Theirs would be a union of distinctive temperaments and unflagging love of over 63 years. While Jim attended University of Denver on the G.I. Bill, Nancy continued to work in the medical field as the secretary/administrative assistant to the Chief of Staff at Denver General Hospital (1947-1950). After a brief return to Minnesota, where Jim worked for Pillsbury in Minneapolis, the couple moved to Grand Junction in 1952, where he began a long career with the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. Nancy was the very model of postwar middle-class motherhood. She devoted herself tirelessly to the welfare of her family, and yet found time as well for dedicated service to the civil society of the Western Slope. Here her activities included participating for over 50 years as a member of P.E.O; volunteering for the local crisis and suicide prevention hotline; lending her marvelous soprano voice to the choir of the First Congregational Church; advocating for patients undergoing eye surgery that she had herself successfully confronted; and overseeing for years the bookkeeping of the gift shop of the St. Mary's Auxiliary. No ordinary homemaker, Nancy was an accomplished cook, baker, knitter, painter, art and doll collector, music lover, reader, and gardener - raising everything from giant marigolds enhanced by a fertilizer of uranium tailings in the 1960s to beautiful roses cultivated in more orthodox fashion later in life. The Christmas holiday season was a time when she brought her talents and concern for others to bear with special intensity. Friends and family across the country eagerly awaited her annual Christmas letter, grateful to be among those with a 3x5 card in her recipe box stuffed with essential data on her correspondents. Local friends remember her famous "Christmas bread". Once Nancy took one in as a friend, that person remained a friend for life. Nancy was preceded in death by Jim, who died on June 6, 2010, as well as her parents and brothers, Barrett K. Gillam, John Gillam, and Roger Gillam. She is survived by daughters, Jane Westbrook and Julie Thurman (Doyle) of Grand Junction; sons, Robert Westbrook (Shamra) of Brockport, New York, and Barrett Westbrook (Margaret) of Seattle, Washington; granddaughters, Emily Westbrook of Danbury, Connecticut; Lee Westbrook of Spokane, Washington, and Laurel Westbrook of Seattle; grandsons, Robert Westbrook, Jr. (Kellee) of Hughson, California; J. Charles Westbrook (Elly Winters) of Ballston Spa, New York, and William Westbrook of Seattle, and great-grandchildren, Grace and Claire Westbrook of Hughson, California and Zachary Winters of Ballston Spa, New York, and many nieces and nephews whose lives she brightened. A memorial service will be held at 1:00 p.m. on Friday, December 30, at Callahan-Edfast Mortuary.