Nancy Ellen Dierken

Nancy Ellen Dierken passed away May 19, 2025, at the age of 77, after a prolonged battle with pancreatic cancer. She was born Jan. 6, 1948, in Milwaukee, Wis., the only child of James Roland Dierken (of Milwaukee) and Maud Helen (McBride) Dierken (of Marionville, Mo.). Her parents met while both were serving in the U.S. Army in Europe during World War II. Late in 1945, two months after discharge from the service, her mother was involved in a paralyzing automobile accident.

The family moved to Millwood, Wash., (near Spokane) in 1952, following her father’s military discharge. During her mother’s extended hospitalization in 1957, Nancy lived with a maternal aunt and uncle in New Westminster, BC, and then with her paternal grandparents in Milwaukee. Nancy and her parents moved to Sacramento, Cal., in 1958.

After attending school at Luther Burbank Elementary (Milwaukee), Millwood Elementary, and John Robson Elementary (New Westminster), Nancy finished elementary school at Caleb Greenwood in Sacramento. She went on to Kit Carson Junior High and graduated Sacramento High School in 1966. During her early college years at Sacramento State College, Nancy majored in journalism and minored in broadcasting, leaving college shortly after her mother’s death her sophomore year. For the next 17 years, she worked in office administrative and managerial roles for the Sacramento City-County Library, Sacramento State College and the UC Davis Medical Center, Sacramento.

She moved to Oregon in 1985, first living in Tigard before moving to Beaverton in 1993. She was an executive assistant at Nike for more than 35 years and was active for many years in Professional Secretaries International and its successor, the International Association of Administrative Professionals, serving in offices and on committees at several different geographical levels. She formalized her organizational experience and graduated from Portland Community College in 1996 with an A.A.S. degree as an Administrative Assistant.

Nancy was a voracious reader, known to binge read mystery series (mostly featuring female protagonists with interesting occupations), as well as the occasional biography or historical novel. She applied her considerable analytical skills to a multitude of puzzles and enjoyed the creativity of many needlework crafts. Her not-so-guilty pleasures included daytime soap operas and Doctor Who. She was difficult to stump in trivia challenges around children’s television programs of the 1950s.

She was an avid recreational genealogist who immersed herself for countless hours in research, tracing her German, Welsh, and Irish lines and placing those ancestors in context to the historical events of their lifetimes. She often fell down online rabbit holes when doing research for her friends because any information she found was always stimulating. She was mostly an armchair researcher though because of her physical limitations. Her only travel outside North America was a long-anticipated trip to Great Britain in 1980.

Nancy was a shy person and admitted she was difficult to get to know. She laughingly described herself as socially inept but had a dry, cynical sense of humor she shared easily. She was preceded in death by her mother (1968) and her father (1984) and is survived only by cousins and friends.

In keeping with Nancy’s wishes, there will be Celebration of Life at 2 pm, Monday, June 16, at Young’s Funeral Home, Tigard. Her ashes will be interred at Crescent Grove Cemetery in Tigard, Oregon. In lieu of flowers, remembrances may be made in Nancy’s memory to The Oregon Community Foundation (link below) or a charity of donor’s choice.