Nancy Jeanne Flaming passed away Saturday, March 5 from complications of dementia. She was 85 years old. 

Nancy devoted her life to teaching, moving to Colorado in 1972 and serving the Cherry Creek School District for 25 years. She started as a third-fourth grade teacher at Village Heights Elementary School, moving on to positions as Team Leader at Cottonwood Elementary, the Assistant Principal at Sagebrush Elementary, the Principal of Walnut Hills Elementary, and finally the Principal at Creekside Elementary, which she opened in 1986 and from which she retired in 2000.  

She received her Bachelor’s degree from Macalester College, her Master’s from the University of Northern Colorado, and her Ph.D from the University of Colorado at Denver. Her Thesis, "Students’ Activities During Off-Track Vacation Periods in a Year-Round School," highlighted the challenges of multi-track year-round schools on families and the community.  Her resume only paints part of the picture of an amazing woman. 

As we sat down to write this obituary, we were aided by the meticulous records she kept of her life and career, stretching back to the 1950s. Nancy was the daughter of a banker and his wife, Carl and Lillian Peterson, Swedes in Minnesota. Yet she married a poor farm boy, Karl, from Nebraska. Karl and Nancy supported each other through their lives. Nancy handled all the finances, home purchases, and organization while Dad, as he puts it, “went along for the ride.”  

We, her children, remember how hard she worked and how dedicated she was. She would put in a long day’s work at school, come home to spend time with her husband and children, and then clean the house and organize everything until at least 2:00 in the morning.  It’s not known if she slept, as we were always asleep first.   

Her dedication to her job in caring for the children of the CCSD is documented in the pile-high file of letters from parents and other teachers and administrators praising her work. Stories from her time as a teacher and principal include flying in a helicopter after her school succeeded in a reading challenge and the night she and a few members of the school staff stayed with the kids during a snowstorm that trapped 15 of them there overnight.  

When she retired in 2000, she devoted time to her interests, listed on her resume as: “Reading, Travel, Cooking, Pottery Collecting, Writing, Community Service.” She and Dad and her friends traveled to cities in Europe and Asia, including spending the night “trapped” in Lake Como, Italy on 9/11.  We remember her Christmas cookies, chicken casserole (the secret is soy sauce), and Christmas dinner of Swedish meatballs (for the kids) and Lutefisk (lye-poisoned gelatinous whitefish eaten only by Vikings and the insane).    

We were saddened in her final years to watch her sharp, meticulous, organized mind fall away as she struggled to find the words. But even at the very end, my brother Kyle was able to communicate to her how we felt and tells us that she couldn’t speak but understood every word.  

Nancy is survived by her husband Karl, her two sons Todd and Kyle, and her grandchildren Henry and Gemma, as well as her extended family (brothers and sister Bruce, Mark, and Judy and brothers- and sisters-in-law Paul and Darlene and Max and Marty).

We will miss Dad’s wife and our mom.