Nancy Soth

Nancy Soth, age 91, died peacefully in her sleep in the early morning on October 8 at a memory care residence in Madison, Wisconsin. 

Nancy was a part of the Carleton College community professionally as administrator of the China Program from 1993 – 2000, adding coordinator of Japanese business residency to her portfolio in 1999. As a volunteer, Nancy contributed 117 oral history interviews with faculty, staff and alumni from 1992 to 2017 for the Carleton Archives. And socially, she was a fixture of both the Carleton and Northfield communities as a friend, confidante and celebrated party-giver for a half century.

Nancy Leanne Britton was born on July 31, 1934 in Kansas City into a close, extended family that, given their Scottish ancestry, could be accurately described as a clan. Nancy and her cousins grew up together in neighboring houses along College Avenue–an appropriately named street for an intellectual who loved academics and the life of the mind.

A child of divorce, Nancy and her beloved baby brother Jack were raised by their father William “Bill” Britton. A World War One combat veteran, Bill worked as a General Motors mechanic. He left a legacy for his daughter of strong union support along with some stock certificates that she kept for sentimental reasons, even after GM’s 2009 bankruptcy made them worth less than the embossed paper they were printed on.

Nancy would be known among family members as “The Jolly Good Girl”. Fitting her warm and friendly demeanor, the phrase originated from the title bestowed upon her as the runner-up for most popular at Kansas City’s Central High. With characteristic modesty, Nancy would claim the honor only came to her on the coattails of the popularity winner, her cousin and best friend, Nancy Ruth.

After graduating from Central in 1952, Nancy received her bachelor’s degree, double majoring in English and psychology, from Western College for Women (now part of Miami University) in Ohio in 1956. From there, she left immediately for New York City. Working in the burgeoning field of advertising was the dream for many recent college graduates arriving in the Big Apple and, much later in life, Nancy loved the television series Mad Men for its vivid evocation of the era.

However, it became clear that Nancy was not headed for a business career after she was fired from a filing job. He natural curiosity caused her to spend more time reading the files than filing them.

Her life would quickly head in a new direction after being approached by recent Yale graduate, Lauren Soth, at a party of mutual friends. Nancy was looking over the apartment’s bookcases and Lauren, known as Mickey to his friends, told her it wasn’t a library and invited her to dance. Years later, to the surprise of many, they would occasionally break out their swing dancing chops. 

For those who knew Lauren in his later years as an intimidating professor of Art History at Carleton College, the playful, witty “Mickey” side of his personality may have been obscured. But for Nancy, it was front and center —  so much so that when the Internet came to their home she dubbed the wifi network “Mick” and the password “lotsafun”. 

The two were wed back in Kansas City on September 19, 1957, shortly before Lauren began his military service with the U.S. Army. As young newlyweds, the pair started life together in Heidelberg, West Germany, using Lauren’s overseas assignment as a home base for exploring much of Western Europe in a Volkswagen Beetle. It was the beginning of a life together that would take them all over the globe.

Back in New York after Lauren’s discharge, the two made a home on St. Mark’s Place in the heart of the East Village. Their close connection to the city lasted a lifetime with annual pilgrimages back and lifelong subscriptions to The New York Times, The New Yorker and New York magazine.

While Lauren taught at the Parsons School of Design and worked on his PhD at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, Nancy pursued an MA in English, also at NYU. Son Christopher Britton Soth was born on March 5, 1962.

In 1964, the family moved to Northfield, Minnesota, as Lauren joined the Department of Art and Art History at Carleton College. Second son, Andrew Lauren Soth, completed the family on June 21, 1965.

For more than fifty years, they would make a large Victorian house a block from campus their home and setting for countless parties and informal gatherings. Nancy would become legendary in the community as a gourmet cook and hostess. Clipped recipes filled shelves of binders and countless kitchen gadgets cluttered the counter and pantry. A pasta maker once became the platform to hold a second, better pasta maker.

But Nancy never defined herself as a homemaker and was not afraid to speak truth to power. In a letter published in the Northfield News in the early 1970s she took the paper to task for its practice of identifying married women only by their husband’s name. The editors had the audacity to print the letter under the signature, Mrs. Lauren Soth. We’ll let the reader decide who ultimately won that argument.

In 1970, Nancy completed a Masters in Library Science from the University of Minnesota. She would find work in nearby Faribault at the Constance Bultman Wilson Center, a mental health residence facility for young people. Nancy’s librarianship would serve both the young adult readers and the research demands of the staff. Eventually, she would also serve as director of research and family services coordinator for the Wilson Center.

Nancy’s first book was based on this research role. Informed Treatment: Milieu Management in Psychiatric Hospitals and Residential Treatment Centers was a narrative bibliographical collection of best practices published in 1997. Her next book would be very different and years in the making. 

Nancy had long dedicated herself to the advancement of fun and frivolity in life. She even launched a few business ventures based on clown-delivery of celebratory balloons and appearances as Miss Piggy. Son Chris was often recruited into this effort, and even Lauren once quite unexpectedly donned clown gear to help out in a pinch. 

But the ultimate expression of her world view based on wonder and whimsy took shape with the publication of her second book and magnum opus, Fantasy Northfield. In what one reviewer (her son Andy) dubbed Midwestern Magical Realism and a roman à clef with real names, she told tales both true and invented of the town’s denizens based on her practice of imagining the town as the setting of a delightful musical comedy.

Fantasy Northfield (2001) gently ribbed the small town with the somewhat self-satisfied description as a “special place” of Cows, Colleges and Contentment. But it also served as a historical document of a time and place seen through the gimlet, but loving, eye of a longtime observer. It was followed by the slightly more serious but equally deft A Field Guide to Northfield (2014).

Fantasy Northfield’s last lines were an observation on the small town’s changing demographics that Nancy adapted as the title of her last published work: Nosotros Somos Tambien Northfield: Latinos, A Teacher, A Priest and A Big Small Town (2018). Nancy welcomed and celebrated the ways her home was changing.

Big changes also came for Nancy and Lauren when they finally acknowledged they would have to leave the big house at 210 Union Street in early 2020. In June of that year, the home was sold to the College. A large weekend-long half sale, half celebration was held following COVID protocols the next month. Granddaughter Lucy baked several of Nana’s legendary chocolate chess pies – one of than more than a dozen Thanksgiving dishes she made annually – to sell by the slice to the many attendees who, in true Soth spirit, came seeking bargains.

The sale and subsequent donations to Nancy’s beloved Community Action Center ensured that hundreds of kitchen items and expertly-curated thrift-fashion clothes and accessories were widely dispersed to spread joy throughout the town.

As Lauren’s Parkison’s worsened and the limitations of care during COVID made finding a way for the pair to live together in Northfield impossible, they moved to assisted living in Madison, Wisconsin, where Andy and wife Ruth have lived since 1991. Chris also moved to town from Minnesota, taking an apartment in a building next door to Nancy and Lauren’s.

Nancy cared lovingly and attentively for her husband until his death in May of 2022. As her dementia worsened, she moved into memory care. One will often see the expression “suffering from” in relation to dementia, but Nancy rarely seemed to. Her open spirit, friendly manner, enthusiastic welcomes, curiosity about people, and daily time spent with the New York Times never diminished. The Jolly Good Girl to the end, she will be sorely missed and fondly remembered.

Nancy is survived by sons Chris Soth and Andy Soth, Andy’s wife Ruth Flanagan, her beloved granddaughters Amelia Soth, Madison Soth and Lucy Soth, and by her dear nephews and their families, who along with their late parents Jack and Eileen Britton spent three generations of Thanksgivings together in Northfield: Jeff and Becky Britton and their daughters Michelle Britton and Rachel White, Greg and Liz Britton and their children Robert, Michael, and Anna, and David and Lyn Britton and daughter Kelsey.