Nina R. Phelps

Nina Phelps died suddenly at her home in Hudson NH on Wednesday, June 25.  She was 73 years old.  She leaves behind her husband of 44 years, Robert Phelps; a brother, Jay Pomponio and his husband, Lawrence Earle, of Brattleboro VT; a step daughter, Ruth Phelps, of Framingham MA; a sister-in-law, Judith Finkel, of Toledo OH; many cousins and loving friends.  But these facts tell only a little of Nina’s life story.

Nina was originally from Jaffrey NH.  She was born on March 21, 1952, the daughter of Albert Pomponio and Vera Stratton Pomponio.  She was an unusually small baby, but a healthy one who grew to be a woman of very short stature, well below five feet tall.  It soon became evident too that she had been born with very poor eyesight, and she began to wear glasses at the age of three.

In school in Jaffrey, she was the shortest person in all her classes.  She even had her own special desk that was “promoted” with her each year of grade school, until she was liberated into junior high and high school.  She said, “If the desk is going, I’m NOT going.”

Very early, she loved reading and being read to.  She loved summers of swimming, playing crochet, board games like Monopoly and Careers.  She loved music because her mother had sung to her.  She danced to the popular music she heard on the radio and from the old 45 rpm record player in the kitchen.  And of course there was American Bandstand on TV.  She was an active child, but she never was particularly interested in sports unless she could watch the Red Sox and the Boston Bruins on TV.  She never learned to ride a bicycle.

In high school she took general courses and what were called in the 1960s Commercial courses, for which she showed remarkable aptitude,  Her guidance counselor told her that the newly opening NH VOC TECH school in Nashua would be a good choice for her.  She enrolled and became a student in the first classes there in 1970.  Because she could not be a commuting student, she decided to find living arrangements in Nashua at the YWCA.

That fact determined the course of her life, as much as the firm grounding of career skills she learned at school.  She formed lasting friendships with the women at the Y and in classes.  Instead of returning home her first summer, she decided to find work in Nashua and remain at the Y.  She was now a resident of Nashua.

Another factor in her decision making:  she had learned to drive in high school, defying those who said that she was too short to drive.  But it was apparent that she would need some adaptations.  Fortunately her father who managed a car business provided her with a used car with pedal extensions and an elevated seat so that she could see well and control the car.  She could be truly independent now.  It was becoming rarer and rarer for her to be self-conscious about her height.

She found a succession of retail and clerical jobs in Nashua and she shared apartments with her women friends from the Y, changing and reassembling apartment arrangements as people got married.  She often lamented that she was “Always a bridesmaid, never a bride.”  Finally, though, with a good permanent job as a secretary at what was then Sanders, she got a nice apartment on her own, and she got a new car that perfectly fit her, a snazzy brown Ford Pinto with a red stripe.  She met her husband-to-be, Bob Phelps, at Sanders.  Their marriage took place at the First Congregational Church in Nashua in 1981.

After living in Groveland MA and commuting to and from there to Nashua, and enduring a car accident where Nina suffered significant nose and jaw-teeth injuries that required reconstructive surgery, Nina did not want to commute that distance to work anymore.  Nina and Bob both decided to buy a house on the outskirts of Hudson to be nearer her workplace.  They remained there for over 40 years.

Immediately, they both loved this new home and embarked on a journey to make their house a living, vital being.  Bob and Nina fully shared the household duties inside and out.  Nina maintained the inside for the most part, extending her reach.  Making a queen size bed became easier.  Nina did most of the cooking but baking became Bob’s province.  He became famous for his bread and for his apple pies.  Nina appreciated the crocheted doilies and placemats that her mother and brother made; the afghans and the socks, hats, scarves and sweaters for the both of them, too.  She never did learn how to knit or crochet.

Bob did the outside maintenance.  He did the yardwork.  He cultivated gardens and blueberry bushes.  He planted perennials.  He put in fruit trees, apple, peach and pear.  The house’s previous owners had built a small barn for their daughter’s horse, which Bob transformed into a workshop.  He showed his excellent carpentry skills, making bookcases, one a large room-divider size for his brother-in-law.  He did lots of refinishing of tables and chairs for themselves and for family members, and made special items of furniture.

Over the years, Bob and Nina made extensive renovations to the interior of their house, and of course the house had to be painted, roof maintained, a skylight installed, walls added, room furnishings replaced or switched around, some bathroom work, a new kitchen, a magnificent grandfather clock…always something.

In the early years of their marriage, both Nina and Bob knew that they shared a desire to travel.  Now deeply settling in, they were ready to pursue some of their travel dreams.  Nearly each year in the month of March they took about ten days off and flew to many of the Caribbean hot spots.  Travel seemed easier and safer in those days and they came home full of stories and the pictures to illustrate them.  Eventually they fulfilled Bob’s wish to go to Mexico and the Yucatan where he could soak up Mayan culture and history, even climbing the pyramids.  They returned there several times.

Interspersed with these Caribbean visits were two places that Nina loved particularly.  They went to Hawaii one year, and for years afterward Nina still thrilled to tell the story of a helicopter ride with her in the bubble.  They sent Kona coffee beans to her brother.  He can still smell and taste them.  Another trip took them to Las Vegas, where Nina heard a Cher concert that sang in her mind’s ears for years.  In more recent times, though, travel for them got harder and they felt less secure.

And there were also visits at holiday time, often to Jaffrey, sometimes to Toledo.  And an occasional trip to Maine.

Not long after they were married, Nina wanted something else to complete their household.  Thus came Beulah, a tortoise-shell cat from the Hudson Humane Society.  Goes without saying: Beulah was a special cat—and a long-lived one.  In her last years she endured thyroid surgery and radiation and survived to live a little longer.  Whenever Bob and Nina went away on their vacation, Beulah’s Unkie Jay, if he could, came to stay with her.  For many years they maintained an aquarium with a catfish “cleaner” who lived ten years.

Bob and Nina loved their home, but even more, they enjoyed it.  For both, it was among other things, a place to read.  Nina enjoyed legal thrillers and read current novels.  Bob’s taste leaned toward Follett and adventure novels by Higgins and McLean; history, too.  Bob even read all of the volumes of Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago.  Christmas meant not just clothes but book gifts.  In Nina’s case, as the years passed her eyesight began to fail her.  She could read much less.  She tried over and over to wear contact lenses, but her eyes always rejected them.  The same for pierced earrings.

But both she and Bob could watch TV on their large screen TV.  Nina, like her mother, followed the Red Sox, rejoicing in their triumphs and despairing in their sloughs.  Nina also enjoyed watching hockey.  Bob was a Star Trek enthusiast in its various series.  For him, too, TV was a source of history.  He really disliked the “family shows” and quiz shows Nina liked, so he sat and read.  With time as TV changed, the TV became an enormous radio with rich sound, which pleased Nina whose hearing became more impaired.  She required an aid in both ears.

Handicapped by poor hearing and compromised eyesight and intestinal health, Nina still took on the responsibility of Bob’s constant care as his Alzheimer’s progressed.

During the past forty plus years One Dumont Road saw neighbors come and go and stay.  Some houses were built; some changed hands.  But Nina and Bob always remained good neighbors to good neighbors.  There were few formal gatherings but frequent dooryard calls and actual phone calls in this era when people text fleetingly one another.  They loved being really connected with their environment, and they were never lonely together.  A quiet neighborhood mostly, just a few minutes from an obviously changing urbanization.  Often Bob would complain about the coming changes.  Somethings do change—no question, but some things do not.

Each of us, Nina included, is-are many things to more people than we realize, with love always rotating and enclosing.

A memorial service will be scheduled for later this summer.

In closing. an observation here that Nina would have appreciated:

The lives of both of them in the business world spanned from huge ledgers, statements, carbon paper, adding machines, typewriters, dictaphones, check writers, dial telephones, face-to-face meetings, bank passbooks...to personal computers, word processing, printers. Microsoft Office and spread sheets, scanners, online banking, email, the smart phone, the Internet, Zoom, some A.I.

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