Nancy Childress

Nancy Childress

Keeper of the Family Flame and Renaissance heir

Or here at Podetize: https://feeds.podetize.com/8xdqzanGg.mp3

Introduction

If you are of a certain age, you probably don't know that sweet little Sally, who tagged along while Dick and Jane were having boatloads of fun, is now retired and living in Gilmanton, New Hampshire. Nancy Childress, who is a graduate of Plymouth State, was a former NH teacher until she departed from that path and, in her 40s, went back to college at Franklin Pierce Law to get her degree in Intellectual Property Law. She is also the daughter of famed New Hampshire artist Robert Childress and his wife Nan, who spent the later years of their lives living in the shadow of Mount Kearsarge in Warner . . . and she was the model for Sally in the Dick and Jane Reader series of the 1950s and 60s.

But the story of the Childress family began many years before their move to New Hampshire. Bob was a budding artist from his early years following his birth in 1915. Nancy describes him traipsing around town on his pony with his art supplies in tow during our conversation here, and it was from this childhood start that his career developed. . . and her story began.

Bob went on to have a long and distinguished career that culminated with ten years as the artist who brought those of us "of a certain age" Fun with Dick, Jane and little sister Sally.

He was not the first artist to bring Dick and Jane to the culture but he was the artist that brought vivid colors to a cultural institution that helped to define the American educational experience - for good or ill . During those ten years Nancy, with the staging help of her mother, was the model for Dick and Jane's little sister Sally. So those who grew up with Dick and Jane readers have seen Nancy, in the guise of Sally, for that same period of life.

Nancy has led a long and peripatetic life and is, in addition to all I have already conveyed to you, also an author of a children's book series entitled "The Little Bumpkins", In addition to a book she has recently released about her father - entitled from "The Red Hills to the White Mountains", and if all that wasn't enough, she is an inventor in addition to all of the other hats she has worn.

Today, she lives in the town of Gilmanton with her partner Tony Hartford.