So long, Nancy
One of the greatest people I've ever known has died.
Nancy Salmon, 79
OCT 8, 1926-DEC 19, 2005
One of Bloomington's and Indiana's leading liberal voices, Nancy Salmon, died peacefully on Monday, December 19, after a brief illness but struggling for the past several years with complications from diabetes and a stroke. She was 79 years old.
Nancy grew up in a life of privilege in Los Angeles and Italy surrounded by Hollywood stars (including her step-father), southern California business tycoons, national tennis champions and the "A-list" celebrities of the day. A lifelong Democrat, Nancy was an outspoken advocate for civil rights, equal rights for women, a woman's right to contraception and the right to choose. She supported US withdrawal from the Vietnam War, reform of the Democratic Party at the national, state and local level, and fought poverty and injustice wherever she saw it.
Nancy arrived in Bloomington in 1963 with her then-husband, Prof. Wesley Salmon, and immediately became active in Bloomington organizations starting with the International League for Peace and Freedom and Planned Parenthood. In 1965 she joined the board of Planned Parenthood. She was appointed to the Bloomington Commission on Women in 1972.
Nancy started her work with the Democratic Party in 1952 driven primarily by her interest in the civil rights issue. She was one of the "Girls for Adlai" (Stevenson, who ran for president in 1952 and 1956). The first presidential election in which she became fully engaged was in 1968 on behalf of Sen. Gene McCarthy, whose major platform was to oppose the war in Vietnam. McCarthy won the Monroe County vote that year but Sen. Kennedy won the overall state contest.
At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago that same year (1968), Nancy brought a challenge to the Democratic Party calling for a fair and open selection process, specifically for Indiana, but it was an issue that applied to the whole country. While she lost the overall challenge, Sen. McCarthy was able to seat a more fairly elected Mississippi delegation and it created the "McGovern Commission" which resulted in an open selection process that called for equality among women, youth and minorities.
Nancy recalled seeing many demonstrators being clubbed and gassed at the '68 Convention. This was shortly after Sen. Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated. She said, "I felt like my country was being destroyed. It was extremely frightening and moved me deeply." She marched down to Grant Park with some of the protesters and convention delegates and saw some of the speakers, including Abbie Hoffman. She returned to Bloomington "heartbroken" from that experience and said "this convention raised the question for me if I was going to let my country die or not. I committed myself to keep working to elect people who would represent things that Americans cherish such as freedom, equality and other values in which I believe."
Nancy's involvement in the '68 Convention also laid the groundwork for her being selected as a delegate to the National Convention delegate in 1972 where she had a seat on the powerful Credentials Committee. In addition to being a delegate at the 1972 Democratic Convention (McGovern), Nancy was also a delegate to the Conventions in 1980 (Kennedy) and 1984 (Mondale).
From the late 1960s into the 1980s Nancy hosted many events at her beautiful and spacious home on Browncliff Lane filled with antiques she loved to buy at local auctions. Guests included William Kunstler, Jerry Rubin and Eunice Kennedy-Shriver. She also opened her home to many local liberal candidates over these years from Frank McCloskey, Marilyn Shultz, Mark Kruzan, Finley Campbell, Charlotte Zietlow, John Irvine and Jeff Richardson. Her home was also abuzz with political meetings that advanced every liberal cause from equal rights for African-Americans, women and gays to how to make the Democratic Party's and other public institutions' decision-making process more transparent and thus more accessible to greater number of people.
Nancy also rented out rooms in her house to many IU students and faculty over the years. Others who came to visit were also introduced to Nancy - all were touched by her kindness, insights and wisdom. She opened the intellectual door for most of her tenants and invited them in to look at issues in a more global fashion and challenged them to do more outside of the classroom that could help them as well as their fellow human beings. One of her former tenants, Rick Martin, said, "Nancy challenged me to think and opened my eyes to a wide slice of the world I had not seen. There was a warmth and richness in Nancy's home that was truly food for the soul." A friend and neighbor, Nancy McKinley, remembers Nancy's house "a sanctuary."
So while she was fighting to change the world with national, state and local leaders, she was also helping to change the world one student or faculty member at a time. Many of these people embraced Nancy as their mentor and maintained deep lifelong ties with her. Some, like Jeff Richardson, referred to Nancy as his surrogate mother.
Nancy was very active in working to elect Frank McCloskey mayor of Bloomington in 1971 and joined the city of Bloomington's workforce along with many other liberal Democrats in 1972 - she worked for the Engineering Department from 1972-76. In 1976 Nancy became the first employee hired by Indiana Legal Services Organization (LSO). As a paralegal she served many clients who were facing issues with their social security and other government benefits. She retired from LSO in 1990 and during her farewell celebration received a Sagamore of the Wabash for her dedication to people in need.
Nancy was married to Wesley Salmon for more than 20 years, her second and last marriage. They divorced in early 1970. They had one child, Tori Salmon, who works in Indianapolis at UAW. She resides north of Bloomington where she and her fiancee raise and show horses. When reflecting on all of her many accomplishments and honors, Nancy lists her loving daughter as her highest. Tori, an IU grad, is not only an accomplished professional and sportswoman in her own right but also was Nancy's best friend and confidant.
While Nancy did not remarry, she did meet Tom Lough, a professor from Kent State University, who visited IU's campus shortly after four students were murdered on Kent State's campus by National Guardsmen on May 4, 1970. It was "love at first sight," according to Nancy, and they maintained a close relationship filled with much love for the past 35 years.
Nancy grew up in Los Angeles and Italy and, according to Nancy, she led a "heavenly" life during those early years. Her grandfather, Edwin Earl, was one of the main architects of L.A. He not only created the aqueduct system there but also invented the refrigerated box car. When her grandfather's mansion on Wilshire Boulevard was torn down in 1957 to build a new County Arts Institute, it was a major news item in the Los Angeles Times. She was privileged and never forgot how lucky she and her only sibling, her sister Ann, were to be in this situation. Her parents divorced when she was 6 and her mother remarried Paul Gregory, a movie star in the 1930s and '40s. He was in the movie "Whoopee" with Eddie Cantor - Cantor was the comedic lead and Gregory the romantic lead. She was surrounded by stars and celebrities.
She would only discuss the celebrities in her past if pressed - she was more comfortable discussing the plight of those in need in the present. But once she started down memory lane she would share the excitement she and her sister had in those younger years. Some of the stars she and her family mingled with include Eddie Cantor, Frank Capra, George O'Brien, Dolores Del Rio, Paulette Goddard, Jean Crain, Joan Bennett and the Shulburg boys. Nancy's family also rented Loretta Young's (who looked like Nancy's mother) home for a short period of time.
Nancy went to the Westlake School for Girls in Brentwood, California with Shirley Temple and June Lockhart. June was one of her best friends. She wrote in Nancy's yearbook, in part, "A dozen annuals and a dozen million words couldn't ever tell you how much I love you." She was taught how to swim by Johnny Weissmuller. She and her sister were serenaded by Bing Crosby during a train ride from NYC to L.A. to the tune of "there was a little mama fishes too, she swam and swam all over the dam …" which Nancy would sing for you when telling this story. And, she revealed she had a brief romantic encounter with Walter Pidgeon.
Nancy even had her own "star turn" as a walk-on for a movie about sorority girls called "Take Care of My Little Girl" in 1951 with Jean Crain, Mitzi Gaynor and Jean Peters. It was her first and last movie. She reported it was "great fun but it was not the life for me."
Her step-father took the whole family to Italy where he studied opera from 1936 to 1939. Nancy fell in love with Italy and spoke fluent Italian the rest of her life. They spent a lot of time in Capri, Florence, Lake Cuomo, Rome and Portofino. Portofino was Nancy's favorite and she recalls it warmly as "the most beautiful place on earth, especially where the pastel homes seem to drop into the sea and romance is always in the air." In honor of her mother, who died in Italy in 1958, a convent on the island of Capri has a library named after her children called the Nancy and Ann Library. With all of its beauty tragedy loomed ahead. Italy was preparing for entry into WWII. Nancy and her family saw Mussolini speak and shortly thereafter got on one of the last trains out of Italy in the summer of 1939 before WWII formally began.
Tori said "the trip to my mother's childhood life in Italy in 1985 was remarkable in all ways. I got a full appreciation for my mother's fascination with Italy and her love of the people and places there. I was very impressed by her Italian language skills and felt as if we were truly returning for a long overdue homecoming - it was magical."
Besides advocating for social justice and social change, Nancy had another passion: She was a doll collector. She had hundreds of antique dolls and over 1,000 Barbies - from the very first ones in 1959 to the present. She knew where every doll came from and its history. She made most of their outfits which were always spectacular. "I thought my mother could have been a very successful clothing designer. Her artistic eye was remarkable," Tori said. Only when she moved from her six-bedroom home into an assisted living unit did she reluctantly sell the vast majority of her doll collection. They brought her much pleasure over the years and she loved sharing this joy with others.
While Nancy's health was failing these past few years, she continued to have and share strong opinions about political issues and politicians at all levels of government, equal rights including gay marriage, the Iraq War, the environment, Bush-Cheney-DeLay, Supreme Court nominees, privacy for Planned Parenthood clients, freedom of speech and protection of reporter's sources. According to Jeff Richardson, a long-time friend of Nancy's, "Nancy had the same passion about issues last week when we talked as she did when I met her in 1969 at an anti-Vietnam war rally. She was determined to change the world for the better until her last day on earth. That was her life mission and she felt, for the most part, she fulfilled that mission."
Nancy's major issue these past few years was the need for the country to move toward an Oregon-type law that would respect a person's right-to-die that would be tightly written and appropriately regulated. She felt that as medical technology continues to improve exponentially over the next few years, there will be not only hundreds of Terri Schiavos but tens of thousands of old people who could be hooked up to machines for decades with no way to die with dignity. She knew that this issue would not be resolved in her lifetime but wanted her friends and loved ones to alert people to work on this issue now or face countless years of possibly being in a nursing home, other long-term care facilities or at home without being able to eat solid food, sleep soundly, toileting yourself, speak, hear or even move.
"She was especially unhappy about those in government who said on one hand they were for less government but all of the actions they took - including imposing more restrictions on private matters such as giving birth, who to marry and when to die - resulted in more government in our lives, not less. She hated hypocrisy," said Jeff Richardson.
Tori said, "Nancy will long be remembered for her passion and advocacy for those who were less fortunate, her never ending belief and hope that there could be a better world, that one person could make a difference, and her love for her family and friends. I will deeply miss her as will so many others."
Nancy donated her body to the IU School of Medicine. In lieu of flowers, Nancy requested that any donations be made to Planned Parenthood of Southern Indiana or to the Indiana Civil Liberties Union (ICLU). A memorial gathering is being planned for early in 2006
She was my landlady, on Browncliff Lane, for six years as I finished up school, did the Audio Theatre thing, and finally got a "real" job. She was also a friend, confidant, influence, and absolutely fascinating person to be exposed to. I lost contact after I moved away -- my fault. I will miss her.