Nancy Patricia Jones Bacon

Nancy Patricia (Jones) Bacon, the last surviving child of Clarice (Price) Jones and Virgil Jones, and of Ella and Luther Jones, died on January 9, 2025, at 90 years of age.

The exact date of Nancy's birth in August 1934 is unknown, due to the crisis around her delivery. She was born at home, in Boone County, West Virginia. Nancy's mother Clarice suffered a debilitating kidney disease, and after giving birth to four children in less than ten years she had been told by her doctor not to get pregnant again because of the danger to her health. Nevertheless, when she again became pregnant she chose to go forward with the birth despite her doctor's advice to allow him to terminate the pregnancy. When Nancy was born, those in attendance wrapped the baby in her daddy's old Army coat and shoved her behind a door while they treated Clarice, to no avail. Clarice died within hours of delivering Nancy. She left behind five children, three girls and two boys. Her husband Virgil had eleven siblings, and all of the children were parceled out to various relatives to be raised.

Nancy was the lucky one. Her uncle Luther and his wife Ella had three boys and no girls and were thrilled to welcome a baby daughter into their home. Luther, a former West Virginia House Delegate and State Senator, was founder, editor, and publisher of the Madison, West Virginia newspaper, the Coal Valley News, so Nancy was raised in comfort and security. At the end of her life, Nancy's mind reverted back to those years as a much-beloved child, and she frequently begged her husband and children to take her back to Madison so her Mama and Daddy could care for her. On her death bed her family assured her that her Mama and Daddy were waiting for her, and that it was time for her to return to them.

Nancy felt deep guilt her entire life for being the reason her brothers and sisters lost their Mama and their own comfortable childhoods. She believed her Mama Clarice made the wrong decision in choosing to leave five orphans behind, instead of living to care for the four little children who needed her. Nancy's only pro-choice child told her that if we honor the choice made when women elect to terminate their pregnancies, we must also honor the choice women make when they decide to carry difficult pregnancies to term. Clarice made her choice, a choice with ramifications continuing into the next century and beyond.

Nancy was an extraordinarily beautiful and brilliant woman, with immense talents and drive. She moved to Hollywood in 1954 to become a movie star. Two of her acting class colleagues were later television and film stars; when she appeared in theater productions she received rave reviews. But her own movie star plans got swept aside for love. She married Bob Bacon three weeks after they met and gave birth to the first of her four daughters just a year later.

She had great and forceful dreams and worked tirelessly to actualize most of them. In an age of housewives she was always a working mother, sometimes holding multiple jobs at a time. She and Bob built a beautiful home in Alta Loma, California, at the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, the home where Bob still lives over fifty years later. In the 1980's she bought a second home in the woods of Maine, sight unseen, and for decades after Bob's retirement the two of them drove cross-country every year, visiting the graveyards of their ancestors on their way to their summer retreat. She went to nursing school in her mid-30's, receiving the highest grades anyone ever received in the program. She was a surgical nurse practitioner, and later the hospice administrator for a major California hospital. She was a global traveler, chasing history and the exotic; and an expatriate for a number of years, living in Saudi Arabia and Taiwan.

She hybridized irises. She painted still-lifes. She wrote stories for confession magazines. She sewed clothes for her children even when they were in high school. She wrote a novel. She taught piano. She wrote crossword puzzles. She collected antiques, paintings, glassware, dolls, books. She was a thrift-store junkie. She was a voracious reader, and a rabid genealogist. She loved to sing and dance. To this day, all of her children can sing the entire Rogers and Hammerstein catalogue.

Nancy was larger than life, an extreme, even eccentric, person; the center of her family's universe. She was slim and graceful throughout her life, with long dancer's legs and elegant pianist's fingers; glamorous, charming, brilliant, amusing. She never wore sweats unless she was gardening. She never left her home without perfect makeup, hair, and nails. She took pride in the fact that she could go a full year without wearing the exact same outfit to work more than once.

She was not an easy woman to live with. But she is a very difficult woman to live without.

Nancy Patricia Jones Bacon was preceded in death by her birth parents, Clarice and Virgil Jones; her adoptive parents Ella and Luther Jones; and her siblings Carson (Ramon) Jones, Evelyn Bradley, James Jones, Emily Cornette; Coy Jones, Ferris Jones, and Kay Jones. She is survived by Robert Bacon, her devoted husband of 70 years; her daughters Melanie Bacon, Glory Bacon, Risa Christensen, and Neva Ventre; six grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.

Her ashes will someday be interred alongside those of her husband, in Ontario, California. Decades ago she said that she wanted her children to sing this Carpenters song at her funeral: "Don't worry that it's not good enough for anyone else to hear. Just sing. Sing a Song."