Nancy J Wood

Nancy Jagels Wood passed away on January 12, 2023 after a very long and full life. She was pre-deceased by her son Charles “Jake” Starr of Nashville, Tennessee who died in March 2022 and by her beloved sister Joan Jagels Hardwick, her constant companion, who died 4 years ago at age 91. She is survived by two children James Thrower Starr, 71, of Atlanta and Joanie Starr Thomas, 67, of Charlotte, NC, and by a niece Nancy Clair Hardwick, 70, of Flowery Branch. She is also survived by 7 grandchildren and 5 great-grandchildren who range from Jacksonville, FL to Atlanta to Charlotte, NC, to Cape Cod, MA and Portland, OR.

Nancy was born on August 29, 1928 in Princeton, NJ, the hometown of her mother, Helen LaVake Jagels. Nancy’s father, Charles Henry Jagels, a vice president at Macy’s in New York City, was transferred in 1940 to Atlanta to run Macy’s southern store, Davison’s. Nancy’s mother loved to tell everyone that it took her daughter “two weeks to develop her Southern accent.”

An Atlantan forever after, she attended Washington Seminary where she made friends who lasted her whole life. Nancy was involved in all kinds of activities, singing in the choir at Northside Methodist Church and serving in the Nearly New Shop. She spent endless hours driving her kids to football, basketball, baseball, and horseback riding lessons. She was the kind of mother who tried to support her kids’ interests, and if the economics were stretched, she’d try to find a suitable replacement, like a cobbled-together drumset or a Sears electric guitar.

She enjoyed golf with friends and family and had a pretty nice swing but not lots of drive. Her kids still remember her tossing her burning cigarette to the ground before hitting a shot and picking it up after. They also remember, in the time before seatbelt use, riding in the front seat with her and how she’d throw her right arm out at sudden stops.

She attended Mount Vernon Junior College, and like so many women of her generation, she was never encouraged to pursue professional interests but was expected to find fulfillment in being a homemaker. She had an eye for beauty, whether in design, fashion, color, or interiors. She would have been very good in some field of that nature. Good with numbers too, she held various jobs: bookkeeper at long-defunct Springlake Pharmacy and later at Harry Norman Realty, bank teller, real estate agent, salesperson at a women’s clothing store at Phipps Plaza.

She was devotedly involved in her grandchildren’s lives and would attend as many events as she could including concerts, art showings, graduations, soccer, volleyball, basketball, and various hockey leagues, where she could always be spotted next to the glass with her sister, Joan. She was a wonderful grandmother, always present, always interested in their lives. She hated missing anything, from events in the day to staying up late at night partying. She was known for her manners and elegance, as well as her sly sense of humor, her playfulness, and her bluntness, all which she kept all the way into her 90s.

The blessings of a long life are many, but a long life is also marked by losses. The longer you live the greater the chances that you outlive your friends and peers.

For years and years, she played a weekly bridge game with a group of 8 women and then 6, and then 4 until it dissolved.

She was married 3 times, the last time surprisingly and happily late in life to Louie Wood, a man who’d been her first husband’s good friend, when they reconnected in the early 2000s.

The experts on longevity tell us to socialize and exercise, to refrain from nicotine and to use alcohol only in moderation. Nancy Wood defied all of them. Even though she loved close friends and family, she very much enjoyed being alone. Doing errands as her only exercise, she revived her smoking habit in the last 10 years of life, and once 5 p.m. came around, a vodka on the rocks was in her hand.

Tiny but tough, she made it through a broken hip 5 years ago and Covid in 2021. A second broken hip in September probably weakened her too much. The day before she died, her friend and helper for 20 years, Janice Calhoun spent time with her. Janice said they had a nice visit and that she was in a good mood. Her passing, we believe, was swift and peaceful.

She hated missing anything; now she’s the one who’ll be missed.