DAWN CARTER

REPORTER

“My first name is Nancy. My last name’s Underwood.” She says it plain, like a door opening. “I was born and raised in Poteau. I’m going to be 91 next month … I was born in 34 … times were lean … but it was okay.”

Nancy will tell you the moment her life truly began. “I kind of more or less think I really started my life when I met my husband,” she says. “He’d just come home from Okinawa serving three years … he was tan, and he was the best looking thing I ever saw in my life.” She grins at the memory of being 17 and very sure of what she wanted: “I was not a runner … I was that day when it counted.” The dash to the front seat turned into a lifetime: “Two weeks later, we got married, and we was [sic] married 64 and a half years.”

The early years were the color of road maps and laundry lines. “We lived in Louisiana nearly three years,” she says. We moved to Fort Sill … we had two babies, and we had an old car that when you put gas in it, you had to put oil in it.” In time, their family grew to three children – two daughters and one son – who would later shape much of the couple’s ministry journey. For Nancy, leaving home cut both ways. “My mom was standing in the door crying, but I was so happy…”

The couple’s faith found its footing over coffee and kindness. “We went to church three times, and they had a little short revival … we both rededicated,” Nancy says. “And about a year later … he was called to preach.” Some pastorates were sweet; one was sandpaper. “Of all the churches he pastored … I was not happy,” she admits of their time in St. Louis. But she doesn’t linger there – she testifies. “The Lord blessed … anybody we went and visited, came to church. Now that had to be the Lord … I know it was the Lord, it’s what it was.”

Between pulpits, Nancy and her husband built with their hands what they carried in their hearts. “He got this idea … to build a log cabin,” she says, eyes bright. “We pulled logs … we got enough logs to build a one room cabin … he did all the electricity, plumbed it.” The dream was beautiful – and beset. “We got broke into 13 times … so we sold it. Life handed Nancy chapters that would buckle most knees, and she keeps turning pages but when her husband died, the edges went thin.

— Finding Home at Baptist Village

After her husband passed, Nancy said she felt herself “just melted.” She explained, “I used to weigh 185 pounds, and I weigh 129 … I lived by myself … I just didn’t have friends. I knew the people in church, but my daughter was my friend. We went shopping, but then I got so, I guess old, I didn’t want to go, and I didn’t feel like it.”

Her daughter finally said what Nancy hadn’t wanted to admit: “Mama, I think you need to be where you can be with other people your age.” She began searching. “She started on the internet looking in a big, wide circle around Chicago, and she didn’t come up with nothing. And then my grandson told her about a Baptist Village.”

Nancy’s daughter came to check it out during COVID, bringing her husband Jackie. “She talked to Michelle … she’s the one that gets all the details, and she’s a health nut,” Nancy said with a smile. “She said, ‘I want to know if they fix fresh food or do they use canned, ready made. I don’t want her eating TV dinners.’” At first, Nancy only got to peek at a couple of apartments. “Kay told me, she said, ‘No mama, I think you won’t be happy unless you have a porch.’ So I looked at them, and I decided on this one, and I love it,” she said, gesturing around her patio. The space feels lived in and welcoming, the kind of place you can picture her sipping morning coffee, reading, or tending to her plants. It isn’t just a porch to Nancy – it’s a marker of freedom, a little corner where she can still do things her way.

Now, more than five years later, she doesn’t hesitate: “I would not – if she told me tomorrow I had to go to the nursing home, I’d go and not say a word, because they’re so good to me. They come and get my groceries, he brings them in and puts them away. They are just so good to me that whatever they want, I’m going to do.”

Nancy’s days are simple and full – on purpose. “I do my own housekeeping, do my own laundry, iron … I read a lot, and I color … I do word search. I do jigsaw puzzle … I always got something.” She doesn’t just pass time; she tends it. “I love chapel, and the song services,” she says. “When I get up, I take my shower and get dressed and I go down drink coffee for a while … then I come back … and I read … and I color … I always got something.”

“Last year I had one fern, and I had a little frog that lived in it … when I’d water and I’d raise it up … he’d be sitting there … looking.” You can see it: a porch, a fern, a frog, and a woman who ran when it counted, built cabins out of old beams, filled pews by knocking on doors, and keeps her hands and mind busy because peace, like faith, is something you practice. If you ask Nancy for a life scripture, you’ll get the engine of it all. “You can do all things through Christ,” Nancy says, letting it land, then sealing it with resolve: “So when I say I can’t do that, yes, I can.”

And you believe her.

Nancy Underwood