Nola D. Boyd

Visitation will held Saturday, Aug. 5, from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at Fred Hunter’s Funeral Home, 718 S Federal Hwy, Fort Lauderdale, FL. A memorial service at the funeral home will be begin at 1:30 p.m., followed immediately by burial at Lauderdale Memorial Park, 2001 SW 4th Ave. in Fort Lauderdale.

For those unable to attend in person, the memorial service will be available to watch via Zoom. To attend virtually, please see the end of this notice for link and details. 

Nola is survived by her husband, Bill Boyd, her son, Pete, and his wife, Jamie, and her grandchildren, Reese, Brie and Jack, of Fort Lauderdale. She is also survived by her sister, Pam Dowland of Bradford, Tennessee. 

Flowers may be sent to the funeral home or, in lieu of flowers, donations can be made to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Sympathy cards can be sent to her husband at his home at 5329 SW 89th Drive, Coral Springs, FL 33067. 

A Life Remembered, written by William (Bill) T. Boyd, Jr. 

Nola Dowland was born in Washington, DC on July 5, 1953. She was the second daughter of Robert Eli and Valarie Meyers Dowland. Mr. Dowland was employed by the US Federal Government State Department. Nola’s mother was Australian. Mr. Dowland had met her in Brisbane, Australia on his first assignment in the Consulate there in the late ‘40s. Her older sister, Pam Dowland, was born on May 31, 1951, in Saudi Arabia.

Nola lived the early years of her life in Brazil, Lebanon, Syria, Italy, and Puerto Rico until her dad left the State Department in the early ‘60s and took a job as a VP in sales with the cosmetics company Mitchum in the small west Tennessee town of Paris. There she attended elementary and high school. She enjoyed growing up in a smaller town. She earned money babysitting and later working the production line at Mitchum.

I met Nola in the summer of 1972 at the University of Tennessee where I was finishing my junior year in engineering. She was starting her sophomore year. We were in a courtyard outside the dorms and she asked me to help her fix her 10-speed bike. Little did I know that she could fix it and was trying to get to know me better. That lead to a year of dating at UT until I graduated in June ‘73. 

We had made plans to marry in October. I had started work with Martin Marietta in Orlando Fl, while she lived with her parents in Chattanooga, TN, working at a department store where her mother worked to earn money for our future. We were married at the First Baptist Church in Chattanooga on October 20, 1973. We honeymooned in Gatlinburg, TN, in the Smokey Mountains. We both liked the mountains and would return many times when we retired.

In Orlando she enrolled at Florida Technological University (FTU) in 1974 but had to drop out due to morning sickness in 1975. Also late that year, I was laid off but found work in Huntsville, AL, with the Thiokol Company. She drove one of our two cars all the way to Huntsville in one day while 6 months pregnant. Our son Pete was born on February 26, 1976. We lived there for under 2 years until I had a job offer back with Martin Marietta. She did not like Huntsville very much, and when that offer came in she made sure I called them.

We moved back to Orlando in 1977 and purchased our first house in 1978. She enrolled in the same college which was now called University of Central Florida (UCF) with only about 5000 kids and graduated in its first class in the summer of 1978. She first worked as a teacher at St Stevens Presbyterian Church for a few years. She was then hired by Orange County Public Schools as an elementary school teacher at Bonneville. She later taught at three other new elementary schools as part of the teams that opened each one of them. She was the Teacher of the Year for two of them (Ventura and Avalon). Avalon was also a Blue Ribbon School while she was there. She was the first teacher to retire from Avalon in 2011. She really enjoyed teaching elementary school for many years, even meeting some of her students in later years at UCF. 

While working full time, Nola helped raise our son Pete. She enjoyed playing tennis with Pete and had him take tennis lessons when he was young. This enabled him to be on his high school tennis team. Pete later went to University of Florida for an undergraduate and graduate degree (lawyer). There he met Jamie Malernee, who he later married in 2001. They live in Ft Lauderdale, and we are blessed with three grandkids, Brie, Reese, and Jack. 

Nola was always known as Nana to them. She always adored them, talked about them, and made sure presents were available for special occasions. Nola loved to cook and was an excellent cook. She loved having big meals for family and friends for all occasions. She also published books on her recipes to pass down to Pete’s family.

Nola had many friends in Orlando thru work, neighbors, and hobbies. During the years in Orlando, we built two other houses. The third was her own design on 5 acres east of Orlando in Wedgefield, halfway to the Cape. Nola had always wanted to be an architect, but she did not like the math. 

In the late ‘80s, Nola got into a hobby that remained with her the rest of her life, having AKC show dogs, breeding, and showing them herself. Her first breed was Shetland Sheep dogs, and she was involved in that breed until the 2010s. She had at least three champions that I can remember. I was not involved except as gofer and RV driver. She really enjoyed this and knew many people throughout the US. We took one of her Shelties to Westminster in 2009.

Nola retired in the summer of 2011 and I retired in December 2012. One other thing she wanted to do was to get into a newly starting AKC breed in dogs. She discovered the Portuguese Podengo Pequeno breed.

In August 2015 we moved to Coral Springs, FL, to be closer to our son, daughter-in-law, and grandkids. She was instrumental in the renovation of the house we purchased, and especially in the interior decorating with all of her paintings and sculptures and the outside landscaping. In 2016 we went kennel hopping with friends to Portugal to get a dog. And she did, as we got our Jenny who became a Silver Grand Champion, made the PPP top 20 for several years, and was shown by her at Westminster in 2019. In 2018 she acquired a second Podengo from the same breeder in Portugal. This was Pippy who is a Grand Champion. Two for two is not bad for her in this breed considering how many shelties we had thru the years. Nola really enjoyed this breed and even got me involved in the ring after the second Podengo. We traveled all over the US competing in this breed. Nola went on to become a valued board member of her national Podengo dog club PPPA.

Nola also loved to sing, had an excellent voice, and could quickly pick up song lyrics. I will miss her singing in the car to the CDs as we traveled around the US. She could play the piano and would play Christmas songs while I would put up decorations. This I will miss also.

Nola, I am glad that you pursued me at UT. You were a great companion, wife, mom, and nana. We enjoyed traveling together to explore new areas of the US and Europe. I will always miss you for the rest of my life. As they said in that movie, “you completed me.”

To Attend Funeral Service via Zoom

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