Nancy (Garrett) Worcester ’66

From Nancy’s Facebook page . . . On Monday evening, May 13th, Nancy Fenn passed away peacefully in Silver Spring, Maryland after suffering from Parkinson’s and Multiple System Atrophy for several years. She died in her own home, as was her wish, comforted by the presence of her loving sister, Susan Dunn, in her last days. An astrology scholarship will be established in Nancy’s name by her surviving family members, and contributions will be accepted in lieu of flowers or other memorials. Please remember Nancy the way you knew her before she was sick, as this is how she hoped her friends and family would keep her in their hearts.

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I was stunned when I learned Nancy had died. We roomed together all four years at Carleton. We weren’t Best Friends; we were Best Roommates! When she didn’t turn up at the Mini-reunion Mary Watson organized in Las Vegas in October 2003, I decided to try to get a hold of her myself. She was in San Diego and she agreed to my visiting her in 2008 on a trip I planned just for me to catch up wherever possible with old friends. It felt tricky, she was a successful astrologist; and I couldn’t even imagine what an astrologist did or how. And then I discovered that she had more in common with my friends who are social workers, clinical psychologists or psychiatrists than I could ever have imagined. Her success in helping all kinds of people with all kinds of personal problems, using entirely different methods (often her intuition) than I was familiar with, made me extremely proud. Exhausted from two days of intensive interchange of where we stood in adult life, family and society, I moved on to my next stop, rewarded and in anticipation of our next encounter. I’m so pleased I decided to take that trip to San Diego, and that she agreed. And I’m so sorry it was all I’ll ever get.

Susan Farr Wassenaar ’66

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From Nancy and John’s daughter, Hadley

After graduation, Nancy moved to Chicago to work on the Chicago Sun Times, a position she loved. There she met Roger Ebert (a fun fact she often mentioned at parties!).  It was not long before Nancy married John Worcester who by then had joined the Navy and was preparing to leave for war. The two moved around the country so John could complete various training courses and eventually settled in San Diego where Nancy worked as an administrative assistant at a bank and gave birth to a baby girl, born in 1971.

After a divorce in 1975, Nancy attended paralegal school and began a career as a legal secretary, something at which she excelled and in which she took great joy.  She was a devoted mother who also managed to pursue her own interests, one at a time, mostly athletic, and always with great intensity. These included racquetball, scuba diving, roller blading, and finally tennis.

With her daughter grown, Nancy began to pursue professionally an interest she had had as a hobby for many years and became a professional astrologer known as Nancy Fenn. Astrology is a philosophical system Nancy believed explains the mysteries of life, reveals the underlying patterns of our existence, and illuminates the darkest corners of the psyche.  She was sensitive to the unorthodox career she had chosen and how it was received by others but took great pride nonetheless in being well respected in her field and nationally recognized as an expert on Saturn Returns.  Nancy was well versed in Jungian psychology and mystical traditions.  She spent the last decades of her life listening patiently to others’ sufferings, providing guidance and insight when her expertise was sought, offering emotional support in the most trying moments of people’s lives, and bearing witness to their suffering.

Nancy loved to write and was proud of her accomplishments in print. She published an article on the American buffalo in a large newspaper when she was still in her 20s, then later co-authored a book on surviving divorce called Alone.  She had great success at the end of her life with her websites on astrology due not only to her great insight but also her appealing prose.

On Monday evening, May 13, 2013, passed away peacefully in Silver Spring, Maryland, after suffering from Parkinson’s and Multiple System Atrophy for several years.  She died in her own home, as was her wish, comforted by the presence of her loving sister, Susan Dunn, in her last days.  The next day her grandson was born in San Diego.  An astrology scholarship has been established in Nancy’s name by her surviving family members.  

Please remember Nancy the way you knew her before she was sick, as this is how she hoped her friends and family would keep her in their hearts.