Nancy Chase Holbrook

New Orleans lost a long-time champion of the city and its culture December 3 when Nancy Holbrook smiled, sighed, closed her eyes and joined her beloved husband, daughter, brother, nephew and parents in the arms of the Lord.

She was a few weeks short of 97 and lived her entire life in New Orleans, apart from a spell in Charlottesville at the University of Virginia. Her father, Samuel Fry Chase, an Annapolis grad and Navy lifer, was stationed at Jackson Barracks in Chalmette near New Orleans where his wife Maud Mueller Chase gave birth to Nancy on December 29, 1926. Nancy and her older brother, Samuel Fry Chase, Jr., were raised at the Barracks and moved Uptown near the Garden District in 1939 to the spacious Victorian on Chestnut Street. "Daddy Sam", as the Navy Commander became known in the family, was redirected in 1942 to teach officers' training classes in naval history, battle tactics and celestial navigation at the University of Virginia during WWII. Nancy attended Sophie Wright high school in New Orleans and was awarded an associate degree at the then all-male University of Virginia. After the war the Chase family returned to the handsome Victorian on Chestnut, the anchor of the family compound on the block that developed over the following decades.

Nancy was working in a marketing capacity at New Orleans Public Service in the 1950s when a dashing Navy veteran, Commander Anton Winter Holbrook, an executive with the company, made her acquaintance, courted her, received Commander Chase's approval and they married March 31, 1951. Nancy and Winter bought a beautiful Eastlake house across the street from the Chases in 1953, while the Chases bought additional properties on the block, eventually passed to Nancy and her brother. Between the Commander and his progeny, Nancy and "Uncle Sam", the Chases have promoted and supported a family environment on that Chestnut block for over 80 years.

Nancy and Winter were blessed with three daughters, Nancy Louise "Missy" Landry, Virginia Chase Holbrook and Molly Maud Tracey. Nancy was pre-deceased by her parents, her husband, her brother, her daughter Missy, and nephew William Stevens Chase. Left to cherish her spirited intellect and stories from her encyclopedic memory are daughters Virginia (Paul Teten) and Molly, son-in-law Robert Landry; grandchildren Brook Elizabeth Tracey, Anna Winter Tracey, and Robert Anton Elphage Landry; nephew Samuel Fry Chase III (Kay); grand nephews and niece William Stevens Chase, Jr., Edward Fry Chase (Laura) and Eva Maud Chase (Jacob Hill), and great-grand nieces and nephews Lilianna and Oliver Chase, and Hazel and Darius Hill. Nancy's step-grandchildren Robert Teten (Anna), Annie Behrent (Adam) and John Teten revered her and prayed for her comfort in the final days; including their children Nash and Nolan Teten, and Cassidy and Davis Behrent.

Nancy's family wishes to express its gratitude for decades of friendship and assistance from Ramon Sabonge, Jr. and his family. Also much appreciated is the kindness and care from the duty nurses on T8 at LCMC Touro hospital and at Passages, Nancy's final stop.

At Nancy's request there will be no service. She will be interred privately adjacent to her husband and daughter at Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans.

Nancy and Winter loved their friends and social life Uptown and in the Garden District after the war. They became legendary participants in Mardi Gras celebrations, showing up at Patsy & David Hunter's Shrove Tuesday parties elaborately costumed as Olive Oil and Popeye once and the Whos from Whoville another year. Nancy maintained life-long friendships from her years at UVA in Charlottesville and summers spent at the family retreat in Covington. She stayed close to her mother's eight siblings and frequently travelled to visit many of her aunts, including her aunt Helen and uncle Norman Smith in Portland, Maine, who left her their summer cottage on Peaks Island in Casco Bay. Nancy had a core belief in the value of family and worked tirelessly and spent treasure cultivating the Chase block on Chestnut in New Orleans. She understood she represented the 10th generation of the Chase line in America, dating back to a 7-year-old British orphan named Aquilla Chase, adopted by mariners from Woolverstone on the River Orwell in northeast England, determined to explore the New World in the late 1620s. The Chase clan prospered and farmed in New Hampshire, later migrating to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in Newbury. Two of Aquilla's great-grandsons, Moody and Moses Chase, fought for independence in the Revolutionary War. Nancy's first cousin, 7th removed, was Salman Portland Chase, who served as the 6th Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, 1864-1873, having also served as Governor of Ohio and Abraham Lincoln's Treasury Secretary. Her great grandfather Henry Bright Chase left Warren, New Hampshire to find his way West in the 1850's, stopped in Clinton, Louisiana to take work for the Kansas City-Southern Railroad, where he met Emily Blossman, decided to stay and married her. Their son, Samuel Blossman Chase, moved to New Orleans in the 1880s to pursue business interests. Nancy was a tireless practitioner of oral history and her family delighted in her accounts of family exploits, particularly those of her mother Maud's great-aunt Fernanda Wolff, an accomplished woman whose father served as the Russian Vice-Consulate to the Republic of Texas in the 1840's.

Nancy's family respectfully suggests consideration of a contribution to The Historic New Orleans Collection in her memory (www.hnoc.org).

Nancy left us this poem by Helen Lowrie Marshall: I'd like the memory of me To be a happy one. I'd like to leave an afterglow Of smiles when day is done. I'd like to leave an echo Whispering softly down the ways, Of happy times, and laughing times And bright and sunny days. I'd like the tears of those who grieve To dry before the sun Of happy memories I leave Behind – when day is done.

To view and sign the online guest book, please visit www.lakelawnmetairie.com.