Nancy Jean Strong

With profound sadness, the family of Nancy Jean Strong reports that she has passed from this world on August 31, 2018, as a result of complications of an earlier stroke. She was 88 years young. True to her name, Nancy was a strong woman who overcame life’s challenges with determination and the will to succeed. She was by nature a happy person and liked to help others in any way she could, as demonstrated by her career path. Whether as a lifeguard, a teacher, an interviewer, or a court clerk, Nancy always loved working with other people to help them meet whatever their goals might be. Nancy’s family, the Schultz’s, moved from Chicago, her birth place to Berkeley, California very early in her life. From there, she attended the Albany and Berkeley public schools right up to her graduation from University of California, Berkeley, with a Masters in Social Work, and a minor in Physical Education, along with a California teaching credential. Along the way, she loved music and theater and played the french horn in the schools’ marching bands. She also developed a love of painting watercolors, and eventually became an active seller of her own work at the Balboa Park Art Marts that were held every weekend. Upon graduation from Berkeley, Nancy married William Robert Strong, whose career in the oilfield machinery business kept them moving – settling in, among others, Coalinga, Taft and eventually Sacramento, California in the first years of her marriage. In Sacramento, she was one of the founding directors of the Head Start program, helping to prepare underprivileged students for kindergarten in the early sixties. In approximately 1965, Nancy’s husband was transferred again, this time to San Diego, California, which is where she raised her two children and made her home for the rest of her life. Nancy and her husband got divorced in the early seventies. Single in San Diego, Nancy worked first as a substitute teacher in K-8 public schools, and then as an interviewer for the burn center at the University of California School of Community Medicine, interviewing patients recovering from burn accidents at monthly intervals to see how their lives and their recoveries could be made easier. After that, she spent 25 years working as a court clerk for the Municipal Traffic Court in Kearny Mesa from which she retired. Retired life brought renewed vigor and she traveled extensively, did daily water aerobics to stay healthy, watched her grandkids grow up and resumed painting watercolors, all while enjoying the camaraderie of her special group of friends at the Jewish Community Center. Nancy was preceded in death by her brother Charles Schultz. She is survived by her daughter, Kathleen; her son, Robert and her two grandchildren, Breanna and Kevin. She will be laid to rest next to her mother, Evelyn Bethia Woods Schultz at El Camino Memorial Park in San Diego. Many thanks to the staff and volunteers at Villa Alegre, MesaView Kaiser Hospital, and the ParkView Hospice for all their help and support during her final illness. RIP my dear mother, Kathy.