Remembering the Little General
Nancy Ayer passed away on August 14, at the age of 84. She had been part of the Moosehead Historical Society for more than two decades, and she’d had a hand in nearly everything here: our collections, our library, our exhibits, the people who walked through our doors. Illness forced her to step away from her desk this spring, and she fully expected to be back at it as soon as she could. I want to tell you about her, because a lot of people reading this won’t have known her, and I don’t think you can understand this place without understanding what she meant to it. She is missed by all of us who worked alongside her, and by our board, our members, and everyone else in this community who knew her.
Around the office we had a simple rule. When someone donated an item to the Society, a book, an artifact, an old photograph, anything that mattered to the history of this area, and we weren’t quite sure where it belonged, someone would say, “Give it to Nancy. She’ll know what to do with it.” And she usually did.
I became executive director of the historical society in 2023, but I’d known Nancy long before that. She’d been the assistant librarian at Greenville Consolidated School when my own kids were students there. I got to know her much better that first summer on the job. I’d only been at the Society a few months when we suddenly found ourselves short-staffed, and Nancy and Barbara Crossman, both retired, both former Society staff, agreed to come back and help me out. I’ve often said that Nancy and Barbara saved me that summer. Nancy was about 80 years old at the time, and I always considered myself lucky she was willing to do it. It wasn’t until after she died, in a conversation with her daughter Candy, that I learned Nancy had actually felt honored that I’d asked her back. That hit me pretty hard. I’d spent three years grateful she’d agreed to help me, never once realizing what being asked had meant to her. She loved the Historical Society, and she loved being part of what we were doing.
What I relied on most was her judgment. Nancy had been around long enough to remember people, decisions, and ways of doing things the rest of us didn’t, and I asked her about nearly everything. More than that, I trusted her answer. She was never going to tell me what she thought I wanted to hear. She’d tell me what she actually thought, and I loved that about her. I always knew what was coming when she started a conversation with “I’ve been thinking.” That was her polite way of telling me there was a better way to do something, and most of the time she was right. She challenged me, and I came to value that enormously. If she thought something could be better, she said so. There was nothing personal about it, just experience, high standards, and a real desire to see the Society succeed.
She earned that trust the hard way, over a long career here, on and off since the early 2000s. While she was still working at Greenville Consolidated School, Nancy spent one day a week at the Society, and after retiring from the school she became a much bigger part of the day-to-day operation here. She hadn’t created our library; it was established and organized well before she came to work here. But she became its caretaker, made sure new materials were properly incorporated, and over her last three years spent a tremendous amount of time keeping our online catalog current. That care traced back to her years at the Rockwood Community School and as assistant librarian at Greenville Consolidated School. She was just as sure-handed accessioning new items into the museum collection, an area I knew almost nothing about at first. Nancy knew it well, and I relied on her heavily for it.
Nancy also had a remarkable interest in technology. She embraced it rather than resisted it. She’d come into work and say, “I saw this on the internet,” and it was almost always something connected to the history of the Moosehead region that she thought we ought to know about. For a couple of years she kept after me about creating a new logo for the Society. She thought we needed one and didn’t let me forget it. We finally adopted a new logo this past spring, and Nancy deserves much of the credit for pushing that idea along.
She did the ordinary things too. She greeted visitors, helped researchers, and was a steady presence at our events, the Mother’s Day tea, our presentations, and the holiday open houses. She kept track of people, too. Nancy genuinely wanted to know how you were doing, how your family was, and whether everything was all right. She’d often bring family along, and she always cooked something delicious. Wicked dependable, that’s what she was. Nancy lived in Rockwood, about 20 miles from Greenville, and bad weather didn’t keep her home. There were winter days when the roads were poor and she made the drive anyway, because she was supposed to be at work. Somewhere along the way we started calling her “the Little General,” and there was nothing but affection in it. The nickname really took hold after she first got sick and had to be away from us. We missed having her in the office, and one of us would inevitably ask, “What would the Little General do right now?”
Nancy traveled to London last October. When she got home she had a cough that never really went away. It persisted through the winter, and she kept coming to work, though those of us who knew her well could tell she wasn’t quite herself. Eventually, after learning she had cancer, she had to take medication that kept her from driving, and that’s when she finally stepped away from working at the Society. But she never really stopped being part of it. Right up until the week before she died, I was still sending her things I’d written and asking her to proofread them. I trusted her judgment that much.
Trying to describe Nancy to someone who didn’t know her, I keep coming back to a favorite schoolteacher, the one you remember long after you leave the classroom. Kind and pleasant, but with standards. She cared about you, but she wouldn’t just agree with you. If she thought you could do better, she told you so.
For those who only knew Nancy through her years at the Society, here’s some of what you might not know. Outside these walls, she was deeply involved in the Rockwood Community Church, which mattered to her every bit as much as this place did. Nancy was born July 1, 1942, in Farmington, the daughter of Merritt and Helen Averill. She married Donald T. Ayer in 1961 and raised four children: Carey, Crystal, Candace and Cory. In the early 1980s the family moved from Temple to the Ayer family home in Rockwood. Her family described her as their number one cheerleader and voice of reason. That sounds exactly right to those of us who knew her here, too.
I’m going to miss hearing “I’ve been thinking,” and so will everyone else in this office. And I’m going to miss the Little General very much. We all will.
A familiar face at the Moosehead Historical Society for more than two decades, Nancy brought warmth, judgment, and a deep commitment to the work.
At work with the records and collections she knew so well, Nancy was someone the rest of us relied on constantly.
Nancy at one of the Society’s holiday gatherings, where she was as much a part of the occasion as the decorations and refreshments.
Pitching in at a Society event, just as she always did. Nancy was rarely far from the work, the people, or the food she had brought along.