Nancy Lee Ellington

Nancy Lee Wiggins grew up a child of a poor farming family in Vanceboro, in rural eastern North Carolina. She and her sisters helped with the chores and with the crops. Her Dad built a tobacco smokehouse of split logs and chinking, which enabled them to cure the tobacco they harvested

in the season, and out of season provided the largest level space around for the five of them to use and fight over the single pair of roller skates they all tried to share.

The family grew tobacco as a cash crop, and produced a lot of their own vegetables and pork. Times were hard, but the family worked hard and made themselves self-sufficient.

She learned sewing at her Mom's knee, and got quite good at it. When she was still just a kid, she sewed the family pajamas using the material that companies used to make bags for seeds and feed.

Later, her Mother worked at sewing for a company that produced those bags.

My mother sewed fine clothes for us and for herself. She even took on the enormous task of copying all the canvas parts of a pop-up camper that we used for year and years. THAT was a big job!

During World War II, there was a tremendous need for labor to produce ships here in the port of Hampton Roads, and thousands and thousands of farmers first went to get a job settled, then brought in their families as they could find a place to stay. Places to stay were so hard to come by that the menfolk would share houses among 24 of them - when the unit had only 8 places to sleep - because they all worked shift work at the shipyards, which were going 24x7, so there would be only 8 of them sleeping at the house - at a time.

With thousands and thousands and thousands of people coming into the area, the government instituted emergency programs to produce housing - in a hurry! One of those projects was Alexander Park, in Portsmouth, Virginia. When their families moved into the quickly-thrown-up pre-fab houses,

the streets were still mud, and - there was no school. The first school sessions in Alexander Park were held in a row or two of houses dedicated to that job. Not long after, they built Alexander Park High School. That was where Nancy and Bud met and fell in love. After they graduated and got married, they found a house there, too! That's where they started their own family.

She fondly remembered those hard-scrabble days with her sisters, and they were always close, especially while they were young adults and all the families lived in the same area where her parents still had a farm. And on that farm, we had weekend gatherings, with all five sisters - dragging along play pens, diaper bags, and contributions for the picnic meals we often shared while us city kids ran wild around the farm. Piggies - chickens, and even horses? We were in seventh heaven. Granddad

would give us hayrides in the trailer he pulled behind his old reliable green tractor, and we'd run around like wild injuns out behind the barn through the cornfield, and play baseball, and eat fried chicken

(dispatched with a hatchet by granma and plucked by the sisters), and get corralled for family pictures against the white wall at the back of the garage, and - generally get to spend real fun times with 'the cuz'

generation. That built such a strong bond among us that even now - 65 years later, we still do an annual backyard picnic gathering to try to continue that feeling. We know the sisters all were quite glad that we

all were so close and enjoyed our time together so much.

She was a really beautiful girl in high school, and a lovely woman as she matured. She was very proud that she played basketball well, even though she was quite short. Her friends and family called her "Teeny".

Comments in her Alexander Park Nationals 1945 yearbook show that she and 'Moody' (Marshall M. Ellington) were already 'a sure thing'.

Both she and 'Bud' (as his friends and associates called him) worked extremely hard to provide for their five kids, and we always had a wonderful place to live and be loved, and whatever struggles they went

through to provide that for us - they kept to themselves. Mom worked as a telephone operator for Civil Service at the Naval Amphibious Base in Virginia Beach, Virginia, having previously done that work for the phone company in Norfolk.

She and Bud - in fact, the whole family - were engaged at church because of their activities. Bud was lay leader, and Nancy ran the baby-sitting room during the service, among their many varied roles. Her daughter was the Pastor's daughter's best friend. Their Sunday school class was the one that conceived and implemented the annual Easter Egg Sale that continues even now as a great communal project and fundraiser for the church. She - as well as the rest of us - enjoyed hearing Bud sing in the church choir.

Sometimes, if she needed to get us to stop doing something, she'd shake her finger and go through the names of all of us, searching for the right one, and finally say "Oh - you know who you are" sternly. You knew you were in trouble if she used both your first and middle names.

When she retired, she and her sister Leunett got into genealogy enquiries, and would travel together back down to Carolina to interview friends and extended family to see how far back they could push the

boundaries of the knowledge of the families. They had a lot of 'tracings' of old headstones, and photocopies of deeds and marriage licenses, and they really enjoyed pursuing that.

They also took up Bridge together - sort of an extension of the frequent and intense games of Rook the sisters and her Mom used to play. And they played that game - Rook - extremely seriously.

She loved sea shells, and really loved flowers and the shrubs and bushes and trees in her beautiful yard.

She loved her family very much.

As she became more frail, the prospect of visiting with great-grandbabies was the thing that would motivate her to get up out of bed and go into the family room. She would just beam with happiness with grandkids and their kids - the great grandbabies just gave her as much happiness as you could imagine.

We are inspired by her life. Since she was the last of the five Wiggins sisters, the legacy of her - and her sisters - now lives on reflected in the lives of 'the cuz' generation.

She will be missed - by so many.