Nancy C. Kretschmar Born September 19th 1929, in Bradenton, Florida, to the late Ernest Lawrence Sr. and Elsie James Kretschmar. She was a fourth-generation Kretschmar in Manatee County.
Her great grandparents, Ernest R. Sr. and Augusta Kretschmar, homesteaded on Siesta Key which was then Manatee County. Her grandparents, Ernest R. Jr. and Ida Kretschmar resided on 12th Avenue West in Bradenton in a home built by her grandfather and his brother. That home is now owned by another Ernest, a fifth generation Kretschmar, Ernest L. III and his wife Ruth. Right around the corner from the 12th Avenue home, her parents Ernest Lawrence Sr. and Elsie Kretschmar had their home, along with their four children: Ernest Lawrence Jr., Nancy, Robert, and Doris.
Nancy's Dad, Ernest L. Sr., was Bradenton's first locksmith and 'safe cracker" to her mother's chagrin, he always joked that he learned his trade at the federal pen! Actually, except for a few short vacation trips, he never left Bradenton during his lifetime. He and his dad owned a store on 13th Street in downtown Bradenton, known as the Bradenton Cycle Company which sold and repaired bicycles, tricycles, scooters, skates, typewriters, lawn mowers and anything that was broken and needed repairing. The store dated back to 1902 when Bradenton was not really much of a cosmopolitan center.
Nancy attended local schools: Ballard Elementary, where Mrs. Daughtery was principal; Bradenton Junior High, where Mrs. Walker was principal, and Bradenton High School, where Paul Davis was principal. She graduated in1947, when Bradenton High was renamed and consolidated into Manatee County High.
Nancy discovered the violin when she was in the fourth grade at Ballard, where Mrs. Fields showed her how to tune it up and saw away." All neighborhood houses kept their windows nailed closed from that time on, even before air conditioning was invented! For the next seven years, Pop Grant took over with training in orchestra, music theory, and how violins are supposed to sound. In 9th grade she was concert mistress of the Bradenton Junior High Orchestra and in her senior year the Bradenton High orchestra.
Shortly before high school graduation, she received a Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney violin scholarship to Florida Southern College in Lakeland. As it turned out, Southern was a private college, and even with a scholarship, the expenses were too high to stay there. However, it was at Southern that for the first time Nancy studied with a professional violinist, the concert mistress of a New York women's orchestra who was taking a sabbatical, teaching at Southern while she wrote a concerto. A major decision had to be made at that time whether to accompany her teacher back to New York City as a concert violinist understudy, or proceed with college study as a music education major. She was two months into her 18th year and had never been beyond the Florida State line or away from home for any extended time. Mom and Dad said:” You're going where????? For what????? With who????? For how long????? And what do you plan to use for money????? Nancy was happy!..happy she did not have to give that decision for the trip further thought!!!!!!
So, Nancy transferred from Southern to Florida State University in Tallahassee where a brand new $8 million dollar state-of-the-art music building was being constructed. ' For the next three years at FSU, she studied violin and viola with Robert Sedore, a professional violinist and conductor of the FSU Orchestra. There were hours and hours of practice, orchestra concerts, string ensembles, a year of beginning piano, and her favorite subject, (which Pop Grant first taught in Junior High) called Music Theory, where every week students composed original stuff for real and pianists would play it for the class to critique. Of course it always sounded like a bunch of basic chords attached to a melody that, hopefully, matched. Nancy always said that was her most favorite “academic" college course, as compared to all the general academics of college like history, literature, sciences, math, etc.
During this time she was a member of the FSU Orchestra and a newly formed Florida State Symphony Orchestra in Tallahassee. Then in the middle of her junior year, it was decision time again, whether to continue study (maybe) as a concert violinist or to proceed in music education. The State of Florida had a couple of requirements for graduation. All graduates had to pass a swimming test; that was easy because if you didn't drown you passed. But another requirement was for all music education majors to pass a singing and piano test. Nancy's voice was untrained, and her piano playing left much to be desired. This decision was Major! Devastating! Awful! Life Threatening! She changed her major from the School of Music to the School of Business. All her music studies had to be shelved for courses in typing, shorthand, accounting, finance, marketing, business law, etc. etc. in order to graduate with her original class. So, in June 1951, she received her B.S. degree from the Florida State University School of Business.
In Florida, in 1951, it was quiet. Nothing was going on. No development No space program on the East Coast, no high-paying jobs, industry, business, crime, nothing. The FSU Placement Office said the only job opening available was to be a teaching assistant over at Gainesville while working for a master's degree in Business.
In desperation she went to the Tallahassee Post Office for an application. The postal employee sent her upstairs to the local FBI Office to fill out an application and to take tests. All of a sudden she had her B.S. degree on June 9, and an FBI appointment to Washington D.C. on July 9 at an astounding annual salary of $2,250 per year before taxes. As an example of how the job market was at that time in Florida, first-year teachers were being hired at $2,200, $50 less. Mom and Dad said "No" “No” “No"! But Nancy assured them another girl who also graduated from FSU and had an FBI appointment would be traveling with other girls was as scared as she was. Nancy never told mom and dad. Nancy said the Dad of the other girl pulled out a week before the July 9 appointment. If her Dad went with her to the bank for a loan to start her big adventure. She left for Washington on Thursday, July 5, 1951, on the Atlantic Coast Line train and arrived the next day in train station, D.C. To be fair, Nancy said her grand mother was taking a vacation trip up to Corning, New York at the same time and accompanied her as far as Washington.
Nancy said when she stepped off the train at Union Station, it was more scary than she had thought it would be. She found a bench to sit down and read all the signs, until she found where the taxi stand was. The FBI had a rooming house where the new people were to go for housing, at 621 East Capitol street. The FBI had told her not to discuss where she was going to work; there was to be no publicity. But when she signaled a cab and gave the driver the address, he shouted over a public address system: here's another one for the FBI! There sure are a lot of you people here today. From 1951 to 1968 she was employed in Washington, D.C. at FBI Headquarters. She then studied to become a shorthand court reporter, graduating from the Jacksonville (FL) Stenotype Institute in 1971 and later receiving the national Registered Professional Reporter (CP-RPR) rating and a Certified Shorthand Reporter (CSR), working in Florida and Kentucky. She was employed as a court reporter (specializing in convention reporting) and as a reporting instructor at the Jacksonville school until 1984. During a two-year period after 1977-78, she was employed as a court reporter in Louisville, Kentucky. During her reporting career, she was a member of the National Shorthand Reporters Association (NSRA) and the Florida ESRA) and Kentuctcy (KSRA) shorthand reporters associations. After returning home she was employed in the office of the Provost, New College at Sarasota, retiring as an executive secretary in 1996.
She is a member of Peace Lutheran Church in Bradenton.
She was previously deceased by her parents, Ernest Lawerence Sr and Elsie James Kretschmar; her brothers, Ernest Lawrence Jr. Kretschmar and Robert James Kretschmar, sister Doris Harrison, Palmetto, her sister-in-law Wilhelmina Kretschmar, Zephyrhills, FL, She is survived by her sister- in -law, Marcella Kretschmar, Tucker, GA; and many cousins, nephews and nieces.
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