Nadine Adele (Conger) Light

Nadine Adele Conger was born March 6, 1929, in Monterey, California, the daughter of Melvin Andrew Conger and Florence Daisy (née Hawes). Nadine's only sibling, Bradford Melvin, pre-deceased her in 1992.

Nadine wed fellow Monterey native John Milton Light in 1948. John died in March of 1997 at the age of 71 after a career as an elementary school teacher and superintendent.

Nadine and John are survived by all of their 8 children; 29 grandchildren; more than 40 great-grand, step-grand and step-great-grandchildren, and several nieces and nephews.

One of Nadine's great-granddaughters, Addisyn, prepared this video tribute at age 11:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=EOLpU2hG1sk&feature=share

Nadine was a competitive young athlete and popular cheerleader at Monterey High School where she graduated a year ahead of her class in 1946. She would receive an A.A. degree in 1948 from Hartnell College in Salinas where she reigned as the college's very first homecoming queen.

Nadine was a lifelong homemaker, beginning as a teenager caring for her father and younger brother in Monterey while her mother commuted by train to the Bay Area to pursue a career in mechanical engineering. Her first job outside the home was driving a truck for the advertising department of the Monterey Peninsula Herald. She would prefer driving "a stick shift" all her life. Nadine continued to work while in school for banks in Monterey and San Francisco, before wedding and becoming a young mother with first homes in Monterey. Later, while maintaining two homes and raising the family in Panoche and Hollister, California, Nadine often assisted her husband John in the classroom and in extracurricular activities. She taught children and teenagers in the Baptist churches where the couple both served as deacons.

In later years in Hollister California, she would manage and cook for two restaurants, as well as clerk in a gourmet kitchen shop, to help put her three youngest children successfully through college.

Nadine passed peacefully in her sleep at her Carmel Valley home on Thanksgiving weekend with her eldest son at her side.

Nadine is inurned at the El Carmelo Cemetery in Pacific Grove in the Light Family plot nearby over 30 relatives including her parents, her brother Brad and his wife Dolores, all four of her grandparents and three of her great-grandparents, numerous aunts, uncles, cousins and in-laws; most, like her, the direct descendants of American pioneers.

A memorial gathering of family and friends is hoped for a later date when travel and group assembly are deemed safe and all the family is available. One possible location will be the Hacienda Carmel, Carmel Valley, where Nadine retired to live in 1999.

Memorial contributions may be made to Food Bank for Monterey County: https://foodbankformontereycounty.org/donate/

or Community Food Bank of San Benito: https://www.communityfoodbankofsbc.org/donate/.

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