Memorial
A memorial was held at the Yale Club of New York on Saturday 1/31/2026
Jump to speakers remarks
Margery Freeman | William Regalado Succop | Andy Pelosi | Timmie Vitz | Charles Affron | Dick Dickinson
Introduction and Blessing - video from Memorial
Margery Freeman - video from Memorial
Beloved Nancy was vibrant, humorous, loving – my sister 5 years older than me.
When I was feeling homeless – our Mill Valley home had been sold – I went to live with Nancy & Antonio in their New Haven apartment over Ben & Charley's. Nancy never asked me why, or how long. She simply fed me marvelous meals with joy & love. As so many of you have written in the Nancy reminiscences, Nancy’s motif was indeed marvelous meals with love and joy.
As we all prepared for today’s memorial, I talked with Corinne – our other sister – who remembered how Nancy came to visit her during Covid and stayed nearly 2 years! In 2024, as Corinne moved into an assisted living facility in New Orleans, Nancy stayed with her for six weeks, sleeping on a cot in her tiny apartment, helping her set up her new home – at the same time becoming a welcome member of the place herself.
Our cousins, Gail & Beth, both sent marvelous reminiscences. Because they aren’t able to be here, I asked to read excerpts from
each of there writings: One particular memory of Gail’s that I found so moving: “My firstborn son John Nicholas had an undiagnosed neurological disease. When he was two, we were sent to Mt Sinai Hospital for 3 days of neurological testing. It happened that my birthday fell on one of those days. Nancy came uptown and joined my sister Beth for an impromptu birthday party in John Nicky’s hospital room. Nancy brought me a beautiful blue cloisonne necklace which I wear to this day.” Beth too wrote of Nancy’s gift-giving: “Nancy and Antonio gave me a spray bottle of rose-scented perfume in a rose-colored box. I had never received such a girly present. I may or may not have actually used it, but it made me feel special. Beth went on: That was one of Nancy’s superpowers—she made everyone she encountered feel special, interesting, and worth listening to. She knew how to probe, show genuine curiosity, and sustain a fast-paced repartee, punctuated by her frequent chuckles and her delight in conversational connection.”
One other memory of mine: Many of you have spoken of Nancy’s political commitments. When her daughter Mariana was 22, she was part of a store hold-up. Nancy immediately became active in New Yorkers Against Gun Violence. What I remember is how, as an academic, Nancy wasn’t used to working with men & women – mostly poor Black & brown - who had lost their children to gunfire. When she asked me how she could build relationships with them, I suggested she gain insights by attending an Undoing Racism/Community Organizing workshop that David & I were part of. Nancy not only attended the 3-day workshop but her curiosity about
racism never ceased. She read voluminously about our country’s racial history; listened to podcasts; asked questions. A true life-long learner! And a model to so many of us.
When David & I moved back to the Bronx, New York in the fall of 2019, we continued our tradition of holding monthly Pot Lucks in our small apartment. We’d been hosting potluck for years – decades really – but we weren’t sure folks would come from far distances. Nancy came to every one! She’d order an Access-a-ride, bring something scrumptious (often a quiche), and settle onto our couch to visit with whomever showed up. Many were our political friends, some were from our church, others were neighbors. She enjoyed
them all!
Finally: This spring, as our grandchildren celebrate their birthdays, each will get a DBLO gift. Nancy’ tradition of giving a “Don’t Be Left Out” gift to the other non-birthday child continues!
We miss you, Nancy - your spirit continues in our hearts!
William Regalado Succop - video from Memorial
My grandmother Nancy had already lived a long life by the time I was born. She’d been many things to many people, some of
whom have or will shared today. And I think it is a little like assembling a mosaic, what we’re doing here, everyone contributing their own piece, or ‘tessera,’ if we want to be strict with the metaphor, but I’ll avoid being pedantic even though were at the Yale Club. I also think this is exactly how she would’ve wanted it, given the social butterfly she was. And famously so! She was always early to arrive at and late leave parties, and kept a full schedule to the last. We’ll have to add social butterfly to the mosiac.
The piece I’d really to contribute, or that I most appropriately can contribute, is of Nancy as my grandma. But even ‘grandma’ is complicated, especially since the title took effect before I was at the point of forming memories. But I still think this is a good place to start. She was, I’m told, one of the first people to meet me at the hospital when I was born, and while I don’t remember that, I can certainly say I remember her being very present in my childhood. I guess we can add babysitter to the mosaic too. But if I enumerate everything, we’ll be here all day.
So if I try to distill my experiences with her down, I think the broadest thing I can say is that she was a teacher. And, of course, some of the her lessons seem a little embarrassing from my vantage in the present—stuff like “don’t eat crayons or bugs or things you find on the floor,” “girls don’t have cooties,” the kind of thing—but many of them have become increasingly poignant as I age.
I distinctly remember, for example—and I made sure to corroborate this with my sister, given the nature of distant memories, even distinct ones—I distinctly remember a hat she used to wear that read don’t complain, camp in the rain! And this really sums up the attitude, both that she maintained while wrangling two small children (at least one of whom was quite rambunctious) and that she imparted on me whenever she had the chance.
I think she often taught without meaning to; it was just something she did. It was certainly something she did with her positive attitude, in a sort of lead by example way. And Charlotte gave me a funny example of this, although even more accidental than leading by example, while we corroborated. Being of the texting generation, Charlotte and I have never been the calling types. And for a long time, in fact, Charlotte was averse to making calls at all. But when your Grandma asks you to call the hearing aid hotline, you call the hearing aid hotline. And when you need to navigate a series of automated and live operators to get the answer you need, you traverse the series of automated and live operators. And so on and so forth. And by the end of it making a call is nothing.
As I got older, Grandma Nancy became my teacher in a more academic sense. She gave me a ton of books, and I’ll highlight two favorites (because the list is quite long): an illustrated Tristan and Isolde, and a really nice hard cover of Russell’s A History of Western Philosophy. She also lead by example with her expansive library and, was one of the people who inspired my current love of reading and writing.
Now, this maybe beginning to sound familiar to some of us, and that’s because Grandma Nancy wasn’t just a teacher to me. It was, as I said earlier, just something she did. And perhaps something she continues to do. I’ll admit that I’m still working through the pile of books she gave me over the years. But even more than that I mean in the mosaic of our memories, where is a teacher to me and others, she continues. Everything that I do in my life, from not eating crayons to the reading and writing that has become my passion, is in some sense a part of her, something left to me by her that she continues through. And sure, it’s a little cliché. But clichés are cliché for a reason; they’re often true.
Andy Pelosi - video from Memorial
Timmie Vitz - video from Memorial
I am very happy to talk to you a bit about Nancy, my very dear friend and colleague. We were friends for almost 60 years and colleagues for almost 50 years.
A bit of background:
Nancy and I both arrived at NYU in September 1968. We both came from Yale, but I hadn’t known her at all there since she was a number of years ahead of me. (I just knew her reputation: people told me, “you have got to get to know Nancy Regalado!”) When we arrived at NYU, Nancy was already an experienced teacher; I was just 26—and totally new to the profession; still very wet behind the ears.
So we were colleagues in the French Department—and both medievalists. Over the years we collaborated on quite a number of of major and time-consuming projects. To list a few: we organized a lot of events for Medieval & Renaissance Studies, in which we were both very involved (we each directed it at some point); we co-edited a book, Performing Medieval Narrative, along with Marilyn Lawrence; we designed and set up a performance website, “Performing Medieval Narrative Today: A Video Showcase” - mednar.org, also with Marilyn. Nancy and I organized a three-year Humanities Council workshop on the importance of storytelling across the disciplines. We collaborated on almost all medieval doctoral dissertations (Nancy was a truly remarkable thesis director!). Our final collaboration was the very last class Nancy taught at NYU: we co-taught a graduate seminar on Francois Villon, on whom we had both worked extensively. At the end of the class, we serenaded her with “Gaudeamus Igitur.”
And we were neighbors—we lived next door to each other—she in 100 Bleecker St, I next door in 110 Bleecker. That was handy, and quite cozy. One of my fond memories: when my youngest daughter, Anna, was about six years old she announced one day that she wanted me to send her to Nancy with a message. I had nothing particular to say, but I sent Anna down the elevator, across Silver Towers Plaza, and up the elevator, with my message: “Timmie says ‘hi!’”
In a word: I saw a lot of Nancy over the years, in a lot of different settings—and we became friends—good friends.
What can I say about it all, looking back—and thinking about it all? Some things I have only come to fully recognize and appreciate since Nancy’s death, and thinking about what I would want to say today. Perhaps the most amazing thing about our relationship is that it was never competitive—though it certainly could have been: we worked on much of the same stuff!—and Nancy set the tone! She was always incredibly supportive of me and my work. She encouraged me in new projects. She even actively promoted my work! She was always my friend, never a rival. She was a wonderful collaborator—but most of all a friend.
And she was a friend to many other people as well, in particular to younger scholars. She was supportive, generous with her time; always ready to give advice, willing to read drafts. She was a friend. The bigger picture here is that Nancy had a remarkable gift for friendship. She had many friends, of all kinds. She made an effort to keep in touch. You could always count on her. If she knew you were coming to town, she invited you to tea or lunch. I have many happy memories of her delicious quiches…
So—Nancy was a friend. And it wasn’t just that Nancy was “nice”! Nancy had very loving heart. That is why so many people loved her. We all know about the Grinch, whose heart was several sizes too small. Well, Nancy’s heart was several sizes larger than most people’s. She really cared about people. She was always eager to hear your news—for example, about family. I can still hear her say about some baby or child of mine or someone else’s, “What a cutie!”
Nancy had a lot of common sense—basic practical wisdom. An example. Let’s say you have made some minor screw-up—worn the wrong thing, stumbled in some way. Nancy would say: “Few will notice, and none will care.” This was a favorite quote of hers, which she got from a grandmother of hers, and that I now pass along to my grandchildren—and to you. Actually, I recently did something sort of embarrassing. I was amused to hear my husband whisper to me, “Few will notice…”
Along with her work as a medievalist in the French Department, Nancy was of course active—indeed an activist—in many other ways. In the university—especially in the Department—if she saw some injustice she tried hard to fix it. For example, she cared about the situation of graduate assistants. And of course, on the larger stage, she became deeply involved in gun control. In light of that, I do hope it’s okay for me to say of Nancy that she was a “straight shooter”…
Among Nancy’s activities in gun-control and other political issues, she was a great emailer, writing often to politicians, members of Congress and others to express her views. And she was very inventive and energetic in her letter and email writing. Law-makers didn’t just hear a lot from Nancy Regalado. They also heard from Nancy Freeman and Nancy Horwitz.
Nancy deserves several epitaphs, but one of them could surely be: “She did what she could.”
In the last few years of her life, as most of you know, she suffered from serious and potentially debilitating health problems. I never heard her complain about them. She was matter-of-fact about them and expressed no self-pity. She found ways of working around these problems, and she kept right on being active, zipping around and enjoying life. Nancy was a “can do” person.
In short, Nancy was the kind of person—the kind of friend—you want to have in your life. I feel very grateful that I enjoyed and benefited from her friendship—and her wisdom and her support—over the course of so many years, and I deeply regret that she is no longer present in my life. In particular, I’m sad to think that the next time I come to New York (from Northern Virginia, where I now live) I won’t be able to give Nancy a call, arrange a lunch so we can catch up on our news, bring a bottle of wine to enjoy with one of her quiches; perhaps even (if another of her many friends hadn’t beat me to it!) spend the night in her charming guest room.
Rest in peace, Nancy!
Charles Affron - video from Memorial
My first memory of Nancy is so like my last, It coincided with my first day in the graduate program in French at Yale, September 1958. And I can still see exactly where I met her--in the Hall of Graduate Studies--just outside the entrance to the dining room. She spotted me as a fellow French student, said hello, radiating enthusiasm, excitement, good cheer, instant friendship, along with a vivid account of her recent visit to Krakow. Our last meeting was just months ago in summer 2025 in Maine. Old age, our parallel walkers, unsteadiness be damned, Nancy’s same ebullient spirit filled me with joy, the frequent joy I had fel whenever I was with in the nearly seven deceased we knew and were close to each other.
At Yale, Mella, another first-year student, joined the friendship and, as many of you know, eventually joined me in matrimony. Nancy was outstanding in class, always full of ideas and brimming with love for the texts we were studying. But what truly singled her out was her courage and strength of purpose. I'd like to share with you one instance that defines those qualities. The three of us had elated to sit for an exam in a course rather than write a term paper. At the end of the appointed two hours Mirella and I dutifully submitted our blue book. Not Nancy. She had not finished writing her mini message and, despite the repeated demands of the professor, would not give it up until she was ready. She refused to bed to the powerful, and flowering authority figure. Then, and through the years, I stood in awe of her rock-solid certainty in what she was doing and what she believed.
Later, when I was a lowly assistant professor at NYU, who should become my colleague? And so the connection was remade, never to be broken. Soon we were office mates and, more dramatically, the two architects of the first departmental salary committee, a committee mandated by the administration. It was expected that the committee members would be appointed by the powerful chair, or elected by our colleagues. Nancy and I proposed that the committee be chosen by lot, each member on a two year term, and all of us sooner or later would share the responsibility and have knowledge of the hitherto secret salaries and therefore, salary disparities. And so it happened, from then on contributing mightily to departmental trust and peace.
Despite our revolutionary action, Nancy became Director of Graduate Studies. I still shared our office and had the privilege of hearing her tactful advice and basking in the warm rapport she instantly established with graduate students - and always taking the time it took. As you know, Nancy never looked at her watch. In the meantime, she and I talked about our scholarly projects, our aging parents, our extended families, their joys and even their sorrows. We both unashamedly bragged about our children and eventually about our grandchildren., but also the mentees whose theses we were directing. I succeeded Nancy as DGS and was enormously grateful to have had such frequent access to her exemplary model.
After retirement, we kept up--lunch or dinner at 13th Street or 71st, occasionally at lincoln Center, and finally in Maine where the lovely home of Anton and Stephanie is not too far from that of my daughter Beatrice and her husband Larry in York. I was so pleased that the affinity spanned more than one generation.
I have a hard time imagining the world without Nancy. In fact, for me, she is always present.
Dick Dickinson - video from Memorial
I went to 19 University Place for the first time to find out about doing a quick masters in French. I was teaching French 4 hours a week at the Walden School and I was also teaching riding at Claremont stable. By chance a boy who taught riding with me and with whom, as a game, I spoke French, was in the lobby. I told him in the elevator that NYU might not want me since I had one so little French as an undergraduate at Harvard. On the 6th floor, out of the elevator a woman very politely approached me and said that she couldn’t help hearing what I had said in the elevator, that she taught French there and that if I wanted I could come into her office and talk about what I wanted to do.
That woman was of course Nancy and the generosity of her welcome was what I felt coming from her for all the 54 years I have known her.I still feel it as I write this.
Seduced by Mallarmé, encouraged by Anna Balakian and counseled by Nancy, I did the doctorate, rather than the quick masters. I studied twice with Nancy, a course in early French poetry and then an independent study of the troubadours. She was on the committee at the _______ and then read my thesis on the poetry of André Breton. She was indulgent of my somewhat idiosyncratic relation to the academic study of French poetry. She knew that it was contact with the poem that mattered for me. She also loved that contact, and delight in poetry was the binding force of our relationship, that and Nancy’s good will toward me.
She did two things to assure my career. After teaching for a year at Smith I did not want to stay there and after receiving no response to my applications elsewhere I was told quietly by Nancy that there had been no letter in my dossier from Anna Balakian and that she, Nancy, had reminded Anna Balakian how important the letter of the thesis director was. The letter was written and must have been very good, perhaps partly out of guilt, and worked like a charm since I was invited to several campuses including Bryn Mawr. I did not get the job at Bryn Mawr, but Nancy told me, again quietly, that I had been the choice of the French department but that the president wanted a woman. What Nancy told me about Bryn Mawr might well have gotten me the job at Sarah Lawrence. When Angela Moger interviewed me I mentioned that I had talked at Bryn Mawr without knowing that she had been there and was close to the French faculty. She surely consulted them and their option was certainty why she wanted me at Sarah Lawrence, Chance. And Nancy’s good will.
Because of the great pleasure it obviously was for her it was a great pleasure for me to tell Nancy about any progress in my career. There was never a long hiatus in our seeing each other. I gave her a kitten, the prettiest of one of my cat’s litters. That Nancy had become psychologically important in my life was clear to me when my mother died in 1997. When I came back from Virginia I wanted to call Nancy, and did. She understood completely why I was calling her at that time. We had had tea parties before but I think it was then that it became a tradition. The golden age of those tea parties began when Nancy moved to 13th Street, my street, and was my neighbor down the street on the other side of 5th Avenue.
I saw Nancy during Nat’s illness and after he died I went to see her regularly. We were both living alone on 13th Street. Our tea parties became litter supper parties. Nancy liked to make soup and I think she thought I was undernourished. We talked about what we had learned; I read to her; she gave me books. She was so indulgent of my need to talk about my family which had disappeared, and my ancestors, that now she seems one of them. We also made excursions, We went to Lincoln Center to hear Labu, to the very West Village to see the elephants, to the Metropolitan Museum to see Manet and Degas, We interrupted one of our tea parties to go stand with the Women in Black at Union Square, in support of the Palestinians. Last Spring we went to Washington Square to join a march to Foley Square in support of Gaza. With her walker it became obvious that Nancy could not keep up with the March. She sent me on and said she would take the bus. As I waited somewhat anxiously for her on the Northern Edge of the crowd I realized I was smelling lilacs in full bloom. When I saw Nancy coming down Church Street I went to meet her and led her to the lilacs. I told her that they were there to reward her effort, and we laughed.
The surrealists had an idea which they called “le hazard objectif,” that what seems a coincidence is a kind of truth worthy of our attention and can lead . . .? The fact that Nancy came to live in a place called Montparnasse is for me an occurrence of “le hazard objectif.” Parnassus was the mountain of the Muses and that Nancy lived in a place of that name allows me to say what I will say.
Nancy and I talked about everything. One day at the Montparnasse I said that my idea of the perfect death would be to be struck down and to wake up only with enough time to say, “Thank you.” Nancy, the good teacher, said, “To whom, to what?” I the unprepared student searched and finally said, “to fate, to chance, “an hazard.” I have since learned that the Greeks had a goddess called Τύχη -- chance -- and that Pindar said she was the child of Zeus the Liberator and he calls her Sotépa. Zeus Soter was Zeus the savior. That chance saves is a wonderful idea and I told Nancy what I had learned from Pindar. I did not tell her, as I am telling you, that the chance of her being in that elevator was the beginning of the long good fortune of knowing her.
Several times I would read Nancy a chapter, a prose poem, from Breton’s Poisson Soluble. Whenever we got close to Breton Nancy would say with delight, “momie d’ibis” which is a refrain repeated many times in a long poem, “Fata Morgana,” that Breton wrote in 1940 in Marseille when he was having to flee from France. The image “momie d’ibis” seems a charm on the response on a literacy, and it is more than the evocation of an anthropological and historical fact that corroborates the surrealist notion of the marvellous. Thath, the ibis-headed god, was the notion of the marvelous, and for Plato the invention of writing. The Egyptians mummifying the ibis was the attempt to preserve the spirit of language and learning. That is exactly what Nancy did, in the least exclusive way. After she died when I had gone back to Morocco, in the poor little field next to my mare’s box, for three days I saw an ibis and I had never seen one there before. When I got back to New York just before Christmas there was, seemingly by chance, the exhibition at the Met Divine Egypt. I went four times. I went away the first time thinking I had seen a sarcophagus for an ibis. What I had seen was a ver small, very fine and very dark statue of an ibis and I had also seen a very beautiful large relief of the striding ibis-headed Thoth. Luckily for my sanity I remembered that long ago I had a postcard which I showed to Nancy of a very beautiful sarcophagus for an ibis in the Brooklyn Museum which I had gone to see. I tried last week to see it again but the gallery was closed. Nancy saying those times “momie d’ibis” is for me now a declaration of a pact understood and I will go back to see the sarcophagus of the ibis. It has become a symbol of something that happened, a pact, between Nancy and me. It’s being there in Brooklyn where Nancy spent her las days is an obscure comfort. One grasps at the straws of comfort.
It is lonely on 13th Street now. Thankfully there is memory.
For a colloquium in translation I had written a phonetic analysis of Andromache’s main tirade in Racine’s play, in order to show what could not be translated. I wanted to read the paper to Nancy, but wanted to expand it to include Baudelaire’s evocation of Andromache and the importance of the figure for both him and Racine. For both, Andromache is the muse of memory, in fact the mother of the Muses, Mnémosyne - Memory. Both Racine and Baudelaire imitate Andromache, They become like her, the voice of memory. I wrote the last part of that paper essentially for Nancy. It was only she who was going to hear it. It is only now as I ponder who Nancy was for me that I realize that I read that paper to a woman who had helped me remember many things, who was a tutelary presence for us, and who lived in a place whose name was that of the mountain where the Muses lived with their mother Memory, Mnémosyne. In a later conversation I faltered over the Greek name and Nancy said very clearly, Mnémosyne. My identifying Nancy with Andromache/Mnémosyne was there the last time I saw her in BrooklynI gave her tea through a straw and helped her hold the cup. I read her Baudelaire’s poem “Le cygne” which behind “Andromaque, je pense à vous.” Charlotte came to be with her grandmother and I was going to Morocco for a month, which Nancy knew. When I had to say good-bye my way of saying “I love you” and “thank you,” and not to cry, was to say, “Andromaque, je pense à vous.”
I cannot believe in God. The gods maybe, but certainly not a god who would let poor Abraham think he had to sacrifice his son, nor a god who would let his “only begotten son” think he had to die on the cross. I do believe in paradise because I have seen it, even as it is being destroyed. I ride my mare on the beach. When the tide is out the vast expanse of flat when sand is a mirror of the sky and the clouds are beneath the horses hooves and waves mirror the blue of the sky in molten silver. When I saw that the first time after Nancy died without thinking I yelled Nancy’s name, very loud. Perhaps Breton’s "convulsive" beauty is the threshold of where there are no barriers, no hindrances.
I also believe in justice, all present appearances to the contrary. Given its importance in all morality, justice must exist somewhere more effectively than simply as a Platonic idea.
Justice for Nancy would be that she see. Never once did she ever allude to her vision as an infirmity, but my worry aout what she could see was the only lack of east I ever felt with her. I know she saw with words, and when, at the Met, we were in front of the orange-pink field where Degas’ jockey has fallen, I felt she was seeing it with me. She once quoted Baudelare’s line, “j’aime de vos long yeux la lumière verdâtre.” I would want for her the eyes that Baudelaire ____ _____ figure “La beautè” claim, “mes yeux, mes larges yeux aux clartés éternelles.”
I will say one more thing.
Nancy was as good a person as one could hope to know, and her goodness has been an enormous comfort for me in the last year. Things were bad enough, but when it became obvious that there would be no end to the crucifixion of Gaza I became more angry that I had ever been in my life, angry with America because of its complicity in what was being done to the people of Gaza and angry with American Christianity because it was doing nothing to stop what was obviously iniquity. Being with Nancy was a respite from the violent negative feelings I had. The only time she ever reprimanded me was when I quoted Baudelaire’s “Ange plein de bonté, connaissez-vous la haine.” Nancy said, “Hate no, no hate,” but I know she knew why I was so unhappy.
Nancy’s goodness seems to me part of some original, ancient, human or natural, instinct of beneficence. Indeed, her goodness was all the more remarkable for being so natural. Her goodness was like the perfume of the lilacs which chance seemed to have placed in Foley Square to welcome a woman of 90 years, whose sight was impaired, who came through the streets of New York with her walker, to stand up for the people of Gaza, and for what is right.
Closing - video from Memorial
