“You will go to college,” said Oscar William Samuelson to his three daughters with unwavering resolution in his voice.  He and his wife had moved from Brooklyn’s Bayridge section to Glenwood Landing a week before Pearl Harbor so that one day those words more likely would bear fruit.  And they did.  Each year C.W. Post campus of Long Island University bestows the Nancy Jane Meyer Honors Thesis Award on the outstanding thesis of the year.  That Meyer is our Nancy Jane Samuelson who also has a lounge in the honors program bearing her name. 

She won no academic honors at Sea Cliff, but she won everyone’s respect as a good student, an outstanding athlete, a team player on and off the court, and a font of good cheer, good humor, and personal warmth.  In addition to participating in most sports and being a cheerleader and twirler, she worked at Glen Head pharmacy after school and on weekends.    

John Broderick worked with Nancy at the Glen Head Pharmacy and admired her in high school.  "I just thought Nancy was the greatest.  In high school she dated an older guy, Bob Engel, and he had gone into the Navy and when he came home everybody wanted to take a shot at him to see how tough he was. I always thought, ‘that stinks’ she’s already going out with the older guys.  Every time I hear Frank Sinatra sing ‘Nancy with the Laughing Face’ I think about her.”

After graduation Nancy left for Augustana College in South Dakota with Judy Olsen.  Her second year, however, she decided to attend school where the action was, in New York City.  She studied at Katherine Gibbs School and the following year began work as a secretary.  There she met a young man working in the CBS TV sports division, Stuart Meyer.  They married in 1964.  They soon moved to Long Island, first to Glen Cove, then to Locust Valley.  Their daughter Dena was born in 1969 and son Craig in 1973.  Nancy never left them any doubt that they would go to college.

Nancy also made sure her children were athletes.  Dena says her parents took her skiing when she was four.  She remembers her mom as a tennis player and a very graceful swimmer who took great pleasure in introducing them to the big waves and the undertow at Jones Beach.  She can still feel herself there with the waves pushing her, then the undertow trying to pull her out to sea, Nancy holding each by the hand and everyone laughing.

Dena and Nancy grew very close. On weekends Nancy would often take her out for breakfast, then to window-shop at the mall and “just talk.” And when Nancy cooked, “I’d just sit on the kitchen counter and hang out.”  Only later did Dena realize how important those talks were.  Nancy and her sisters had taken piano lessons in Glenwood, and Nancy passed on her love of music by taking Dena to the city, just the two of them, to attend the children’s concert series at Lincoln Center.  They also enjoyed pop music together. Dena says, “I have fond memories of my mom and I turning up the radio really loud and belting out whatever was on the radio at that time.”  One of those songs was Donna Summer’s “I Will Survive.” 

When Stuart passed his 42^nd birthday he quipped to Nancy, “Ha, ha, I beat my dad.”  His father had died from a heart attack at age 42.  The next year Stuart suffered a heart attack but survived.  Nancy decided time had come for her to go to work, just in case.  She became an assistant to the head of the honors program in the C.W. Post English Department.  As she had been in high school, at Post Nancy again became a confidante for students.  So many people in the local communities came to know and like Nancy and greet her on the street and in the stores that Stuart once asked Dena, “Who does your mom not know?”  And when someone else in the family ran into an unexpected friend, he or she would say, “I did a Nancy today.” 

She never did finish a four year degree or have a professional career, but she became a source of inspiration and strength to many students.  Like her father, she told her own children women should get a degree and have a career.  Both finished LIU.  Dina became a physical therapist. Craig works in sales in Chicago.

 The children had grown up and moved out of state when Nancy developed breast cancer in the mid 90s.  Dena says, “She was extremely private” and she did not tell Dena or Craig. Signs of that cancer disappeared with treatment but at Christmas 1996 she was feeling sick.  She had lung cancer.  She died in March, 1997

Many class members were shocked and sad to hear that Nancy would not be at our reunion. Nancy wrote in my yearbook that she “hoped we’ll be able to get together on vacations to talk over old times and to tell of the new.” Most of us have missed that opportunity. 

I will survive.
Oh as long as I know how to love
I know I'll stay alive.
I got all my life to live
and I got all my love to give.
and I'll survive. I will survive. hey hey

(from “I Will Survive” written by Freddie Perren and Dino Fekaris)