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Audrey Bell Nichols
November 26, 1921 - December 6, 2020
Audrey Bell Nichols was born November 26, 1921, to Lucretia Randolph Bures and Samuel Harper Cowan, M.D. in Deweese, Nebraska, the last of five children. She passed at Heritage Crossings in Geneva December 6, 2020, ten days after her 99th birthday. Audrey attended Deweese Public School, winning spelling honors and a trip to the state contest. She graduated in 1938, and went on to Peru State College, completing a teaching certification in 1940. She met a charismatic man working on a summer road crew: Maurice Allen Nichols. He lived...
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Audrey Bell Nichols
November 26, 1921 - December 6, 2020
Audrey Bell Nichols was born November 26, 1921, to Lucretia Randolph Bures and Samuel Harper Cowan, M.D. in Deweese, Nebraska, the last of five children. She passed at Heritage Crossings in Geneva December 6, 2020, ten days after her 99th birthday. Audrey attended Deweese Public School, winning spelling honors and a trip to the state contest. She graduated in 1938, and went on to Peru State College, completing a teaching certification in 1940. She met a charismatic man working on a summer road crew: Maurice Allen Nichols. He lived in a boarding house down the street from her home in Deweese. His crew came and went, but the two stayed in touch while she taught country school. When Maury left to train in telecommunications in Washington D.C., Audrey followed, working at the Pentagon, a building she said "was built to get lost in". After completing his training, Maury was hired by Baltimore Telephone. By this time, the two were engaged, and married August 6, 1942, in Relay, Maryland in a simple ceremony. By this time, the U.S. had entered World War II, and Maury volunteered for the U.S. Army. While training in Monmouth, New Jersey in spring 1943, their first daughter, Linda Gail, was born. He saw the baby on weekends but was soon deployed to North Africa in the Signal Corps, serving in Egypt, Turkey and the African Gold Coast. Grandmother Cowan moved east to provide daycare; Audrey worked at General Electric until the war ended. Returned to a job and young family, as the story goes, M.A. said, "I can work for this company for 50 years, and at the end I'll get a gold watch or a ruby stick-pin." Audrey longed to return to Nebraska. M.A. founded a road construction company in Geneva, Maury Corporation, and began to build his business. During summer, the family joined Maury as he worked road jobs, living in a half-dozen towns throughout the state. Back in Geneva, M.A. tore down an old house to build a brick home on North 9th. Having had no luck conceiving, they adopted four-year-old Gene Steven in 1957. Less than two years later, Audrey gave birth to their youngest, Julie Ann, in 1959. As the business grew, a second house went up on a 160-acre farm with pasture ground just outside of town. In 1963, the family moved to the country when Linda graduated and left for college. Audrey pursued an ambitious garden, planted fruit trees and each year canned and pickled and preserved. Julie spent many hours alongside her mother, tending plants and harvesting and weeding, helping kill and dress chickens, which Audrey considered an anatomy lesson. Son Gene left as a sophomore for Kemper Military School in Booneville, Missouri, graduating from high school in 1971 and junior college in 1973, earning awards for marksmanship. Still in junior high, Julie followed in her mother's footsteps, winning first place in Fillmore County's spelling contest for three consecutive years, making sixth place in state finals. Many spelling drills showed they shared a love of words. In 1961, her eldest left for college and married classmate Chester Neal Paul (Lincoln) soon after graduating from Nebraska Wesleyan. In 1965, Audrey's first grandchild, James David, was born just before Chet's entry to UNMC medical school. A daughter, Cynthia Jean, was born four years later. The grandchildren enjoyed both the farm animals and the love of their grandmother. Gene's son Stephen was born in 1979, then estranged after a divorce. Granddaughter Jesse Lynn was born in Missouri in 1991, and two great-grandsons, Jack and Wyatt, were born to Cynthia Paul Smith in 1995 and 1998. They too got to play on the farm with "GG", as they called their great grandmother. Despite her age, Audrey attended many of their school activities. Audrey's last grandchild, Julie's son William Jackson Gades, was born in 2000. Audrey's last great-grandchild, Joseph Paul Bobo, was born in 2008 to Jesse Nichols. Joseph too got to know his great-grandma during visits that he and Jesse enjoyed, as Jesse so cherished her grandma. Even at 80, she still wasn't too old to show Will how to catch snakes and toads, play ball and look for rocks. She took many trips to fossil sites, museums and ranch country, Ashfall and Verdigre, or up to Valentine and Rosebud Reservation. "Let's take a little trip," she'd say. "I need to get away for a while." So the three (Will, Julie and Grandma) would head for the Truman Library, the Gore Psychiatric Museum and Leila's Hair Museum, eating barbecue afterward. They hit the road to Hot Springs, SD to Evan's Plunge and Mammoth Site with a side trip to Reptile Gardens, and to Harrison and Bassett to visit ranch friends. With Audrey, everything became a hands-on science lesson or practical teaching, from plant growth and pollination to anatomy and animal behavior and life cycles. Dill worms were caught and fed until pupae formed and butterflies emerged. Bugs were fed to garden spiders. Children were encouraged to look at the stars and planets, catch snakes and toads, lightning bugs and katydids, to observe and listen to wildlife and identify tracks and scat, and even explore roadkill. A notorious trait of the Cowan family was always looking at the ground for rocks and fossils, a vestige of hunting arrowheads on the sandbars of the Little Blue River as children. Creatures of all kinds surrounded Audrey, from mastiffs to mutts. Wild things were welcome too: snakes, salamanders, toads, and even a prairie dog Maury caught which eventually escaped and roamed the neighborhood. Neighbors reported (with some alarm) seeing a prairie dog in town-yet both Audrey and Maury somehow had not seen it, and feigned innocence. Gene kept a pet chicken in town for a while before the country house was built. Two basenjis and a guinea pig named Butterscotch lived in the house in town. Linda's husband gifted the family a pair of lab rats. Moving to the country brought chickens, ducks and horses, 4-H livestock, and altogether too many cats. A pet skunk expanded the menagerie. Her two youngest had the pleasures of hunting fields or fishing farm ponds, riding, and roaming the woods along Turkey Creek. Audrey's high standards for her children's education and her passion to support arts in the schools led her to run for Geneva's school board. In 1976, she was elected, the second of two women in 20 years. In 1977, Audrey handed her last daughter her diploma. Julie left for Nebraska Wesleyan, and three years later, New York. In 1970s' summers, the house filled with relatives from Alaska and England, sisters, nieces and nephews, cousins, Maury's army buddies, and friends nearby. The house filled with kids and a horde to cook for. Cooking was a natural love for Audrey--she was adventurous, and loved to eat. She would try literally anything. Her pies became legend. Buttery oyster dressing at holidays, pan-fried chicken at Sunday dinner; dried beef gravy and salmon patties comfort food for her children. A child of the Great Depression, she prepared the spoils of the family hunters: venison, pheasant, wild duck and turkey, bass and mucky bullheads. Her rule: if you shot it or caught it, you cleaned it. She experimented heavily, a little too much when she once roasted a raccoon. Her love of world cuisine led her to cook outside the Midwestern staples. This love of food persisted, and she cooked for herself throughout her 80s and early 90s. Audrey and Maury loved travel, and joined one of the first American groups to visit China when it opened in 1978. Trips to beloved relatives in England, and to the wilds of Scotland, where Audrey relished the dreaded Scottish dish, haggis. With family in tow, they visited our beautiful national parks, and ventured to Canada, Mexico and Fiji. After retirement, Maury and Audrey travelled to Egypt where he was stationed during the war, and visited Greece, Japan, and Australia. The two traveled with friends to Alaska, visiting Audrey's relations there, and tripped through the Northeast, visiting the coast of Maryland near where they had lived. Audrey sought out real people in other cultures. A spirited extrovert, her curiosity meant she'd strike up a conversation with anybody, no matter their circumstance or language. Her intrepid social skills resulted in a Christmas dinner of goat curry in a meager home in Fiji, a visit to a cab driver's tiny house in Mexico, and a night in a Lakota tipi during a thunderstorm. Acquainting herself with strangers, no matter where or when, led to friendships. A lifelong advocate of music and the arts, she exposed her children to the pleasures and variety of performing arts. She supported and attended Hastings' Community Concert series, and travelled to Lincoln or Omaha for plays, operas or concerts featuring world-class performers. Audrey was an avid reader, a habit that persisted through her decline. She subscribed to four newspapers and magazines focused on nature, history, and fine cooking, and consumed both novels and nonfiction. She read to her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Books were necessity, not luxury. She never stopped learning and observing. Her impulse to watch behavior of animals and birds made country life her joy. She was widowed in 1993. Maury died at home in her care after struggling with cancer, having celebrated fifty years of marriage. With the strength of her friends and faith, she adjusted. Audrey valued solitude, but friendships with people of all ages and backgrounds bloomed around her. Her dry wit and impishness drew people; many of those relationships became close and ran deep. She offered a listening ear, and compassion with no judgements. Many considered her an 'extra mom', sister, or auntie. During her last years in assisted living, the lovely staff there adored Audrey's mischievous sense of humor and lightness despite her dementia. She enjoyed regular visits from her daughters, grandson Will, granddaughter Cindy and family, and was especially delighted if they brought a dog along. Summer evenings found her outdoors tending plants, watching birds, visiting with friends, and enjoying her pets. Winters were for reading-also with pets. In her later, years she kept peacocks, an exotic addition that attracted visitors who came to see their preening as they spread and rattled their feathers. Children ran the yard to pick up plumage they shed in August. However pretty, their loud cries, like the screams of a woman, startled more than a few neighbors. In nearly a century, Audrey witnessed the destitution of the Dust Bowl and Great Depression, World War II, Kennedy's assassination, the strife of Viet Nam, the moon landing, Halley's Comet, the explosion of Mt. St. Helen's, the tragedy of 9/11, and viewed the full solar eclipse on her farm in 2017. A committed member of Geneva's United Methodist Church for over 60 years, Audrey was active in the Methodist Women's group, Circle, and Sunday School. Her strong faith carried her through difficult times; she cherished close friends within her church family. Audrey was preceded in death by her parents, husband M.A., siblings Grace (Lawrence) Davis, Frances (Harold) Dinkel, Lyn (Pat) Armstrong, Ward (Jewel) Cowan; nephew James Paul and son-in-law Dr. Chet Paul. She is survived by her children: Linda Paul (Lincoln), Gene Nichols (Springfield, Missouri), Julie Nichols (Lincoln); grandchildren Cynthia Paul (Greyson) Smith(Omaha), Stephen Nichols (Kansas), Jesse Nichols (Springfield, Missouri), William Gades (Lincoln); great-grandsons Jack and Wyatt Smith (Omaha) and Joseph Bobo (Springfield, Missouri). She leaves behind many beloved nieces, nephews, cousins, and a loving host of friends both young and old. Audrey's vivid life and special relationships with grandchildren and great grandchildren, pleasures they shared and the time spent with her, are gifts they carry forward. A memorial celebration will take place at a later date. Memorials may be directed to Geneva Rescue Squad, Geneva Arts Council, and The Lincoln Public Schools Foundation for Lincoln High School musicians in need. |
