Nancy Lee Cornell

Nancy Lee Cornell lived a long and prosperous life until her death at 90 years young on Saturday, July 2nd, 2022. One week before she died, she was still singing songs to her family. She will be missed, but never forgotten.

Nancy Lee Hughes was born in the Bronx, NY on March 27, 1932, and she attended PS77. Although she didn’t know it at the time, she would meet her future husband, Kenneth Clarence Cornell who was four years her senior at PS77 and they would later fall in love and marry. She was fiery and adventurous, and he was comical and musical, and they made quite a pair in creating a life together.

Kenneth Clarence Cornell was the main attraction in a comedy act, The Happy Jesters, who starred in the Latin Quarter, the Copa Cabana, the Ed Sullivan Show and the Stardust and Desert Inn lounges. The Happy Jesters were entertainment pioneers. Nancy often accompanied her husband to watch his performances and she loved a good party. She was an incredible cook, and she would go to these clubs where her husband was performing and meet all the chefs and get them to give her their secret recipes. Her family will never forget her famous Lasagna that came from a chef at 51st and Lexington in New York. Nancy traveled with her husband and his two musical partners all over the Midwest and south and even the Catskills. She became known as Three Jesters and a wife!

Soon thereafter Nancy realized that she was pregnant and in 1952, while still traveling with the Jesters, she gave birth to her first child Carrie Anastasia Cornell. Within two years later Nancy and Ken were pregnant with their second child, William Cornell, and they realized they needed a permanent home, so they bought a suburban house in Granada Hills in the San Fernando Valley in California. In 1957 Ken Collin Cornell was born, their third child to complete the family. Ken Cornell Sr, and the Happy Jesters were performing in Las Vegas during this time, so the Cornell family moved from Burbank to Las Vegas to raise their children.

Nancy is survived by her daughter, Carrie Cornell, her sons William Cornell and Ken Cornell and two granddaughters Christina and Kathleen, and three great granddaughters. May she rest in Peace.