Nanette W. Wright

Our dear Mother loved to tell the story of meeting young Dicky Wright while skiing near Bullough's Pond, in Dedham, Massachusetts. She was only twelve on that bitter-cold day, when he repaired her ski, and she in response invited him over for chocolate cake. In return, he declared that someday he would marry her. She would follow that tender tale with her description of the dramatic and glorious flyover on May 25, 1945, across Bullough's Pond and between the two chimneys of the old Wright family house on Dexter Road, when Lieutenant Dick Wright, now in-fact her husband and avowed true love, was returning as a pilot in his B-17 Flying Fortress, from his second tour of the war in Germany. When she heard and recognized the rising-and-falling noise of the revving propellers, she was so excited that she ran outside in her red polk-a-dot dress, with no shoes, waving excitedly as he passed low overhead, gunning the engines and dipping the plane's wings in a responding salute. It's just one of hundreds of stories she would tell to everyone she met who was happy to listen. There was crossing the Atlantic to Paris with her mother, just as Hitler's war was breaking out in Europe; returning to the US and living in the Los Angeles house of the architect Rudolph Schindler; sleeping in the open-air baskets on the roof while Schindler and his soon-to-be ex-wife each kept moving the refrigerator to their own sides of the house; attending Black Mountain College where Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius and other artists had fled from the war, and where she studied art with Josef Albers while rooming with Gropius's daughter Ati; Dick's miraculous survival when his plane was shot down over occupied France (November 5, 1944), and he crash-landed the burning plane, while German snipers fired from surrounding woods; the Schrafft chocolate empire from which she descended; her ancestral ties to the Wright Brothers (on her father's side, as her maiden name was also Wright) and George Rogers Clark (Lewis and Clark); briefly running San Juan Pueblo Mercantile; and the numerous years spent restoring old adobe houses in Santa Fe; to name just a few... Our Mother was a wonderful storyteller, and she had a story for everything: every piece of artwork, every piece of furniture, every collected treasure; every poem she recited; every house she lived in. She spent her time not only telling her extensive and colorfully-described stories, but also transcribing them, which her family hopes to collect into a small tribute to her long and rich life.

Although she missed her adoring husband of 70 years, Richard H. Wright, she was dearly loved, and loved by her expansive family: her son, Jamo (Denise), and her daughters, Karen (Charles), Melissa (Peter), Margaret (David), her 10 grandchildren and 12 great grandchildren, and her dear friend Ancel.

While listening to softly-played old jazz and classical music recordings, our beloved mother peacefully left this Earth, leaving behind a legacy of her many adventures in this world, with her cherished children by her side. After nearly 100 extraordinary years, she was at peace, with the hope of reconnecting with those 'too many' loved ones who had departed before her.