Issue date: 3/19/04 Section: News

Nancy Lester

Even after Nancy Lester retired last October from working in the Hendrix cafeteria, after 17 years of service, she would still come in on Saturdays to wipe the tables and clean the doors. She was working for free then, but at least she was doing what she loved best.

All of her co-workers agreed: 'Ms. Nancy,' as students knew her, loved Hendrix, and students loved her.

Co-worker Debbie Lipscomb said she liked working in the dining room best because "she could visit with kids, see how their days were."

"I think every faculty member and every student here loved 'Ms. Nancy,'" Lipscomb said.

Mrs. Lester's sister, Lavada Waller, has been working in the cafeteria almost as long as her sister did. And she said, "All of her kids were here."

Mrs. Lester, 69, died March 4, at the Baptist Medical Health Center in Little Rock. The oldest of five daughters, she was born on June 28, 1934, to Lora Henley and the late Thomas Henley, both shoe factory workers, in Vilonia less than half a mile away from where she and her husband Morris Lester were living for almost the last three decades.

While both of her parents worked in a shoe factory, Mrs. Lester acted as a surrogate mother to her younger sisters.

"She was our babysitter," Waller said. "And when we'd get into it, she'd tie us up in chairs."

After attending Vilonia High School, Mrs. Lester married a Baptist preacher, Preston Merritt, when she was 17. The two had three sons together before they divorced.

In May of 1975 Mrs. Lester was working at a factory in Conway that made Coke machines, when she met Morris Lester. She was working in welding, he in maintenance. The two dated on and off for two years, going to the movies, camping and fishing. Then on July 6, 1977, they married.

It didn't take long for them to move out of the city and back into the country, in a trailer on a plot of land owned by Mrs. Lester's father. The country suited them well, Morris Lester said, because of the privacy and because they could keep plenty of animals.

Mrs. Lester loved animals.

When things got slow in the cafeteria, she'd go outside and feed the birds breadcrumbs. And over the last 15 years she taught her own pet white dove, Coo, how to talk.

"You just don't teach a dove to talk," Waller said. "But she did." Mrs. Lester even fixed Coo scrambled eggs.

Coo was one of many pets she had over the years: stray cats and dogs, a raccoon until it got away, cows, pigs, just about any living creature. Mrs. Lester felt a special connection with animals and even told her friends that the animals knew what she was saying to them. "I think that bird did," Waller said.

Continued...

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