The beautiful and unforgettable Nancy Yeager Rice

Provided.

Nancy in the high desert in 2014.

A unique and remarkable Tehachapi woman has ended her life journey. Nancy Yeager Rice, 79, passed away suddenly and unexpectedly on July 5. Nancy and her husband, LeRoy Rice, a retired Kern County fire captain, are very well-known in the Tehachapi area. Nancy moved to Tehachapi as a little girl in 1950, and spent nearly her entire life in the Tehachapi Mountains.

Nancy was a culture keeper, and she developed many talents and abilities. She could shear wool off a ewe, use a spinning wheel to hand-spin it into yarn, dye the yarn, then use a loom to weave the wool into beautiful textiles. She could cook and bake delicious food using a wood-fired cook stove, shoot a muzzle-loading rifle built for her by Dave Conte of Atascadero, and help run a sawmill.

Nancy and LeRoy raised four children together, and she was a devoted wife, mother, daughter, sister, auntie, etc. Family was the center of Nancy's life, and with her care and kindness and unwavering support, she has always helped hold her large family together.

Allow me to tell more of the story of this petite powerhouse of a woman, whose enthusiasm and passion for living, and her own powerful lifeforce impressed and inspired those who have known her.

Nancy Robin Yeager's life began on June 20, 1945 in the unlikely location of Trona, where her family had mining connections. Her parents were Bob Yeager, who served as a tail-gunner in a B-24 bomber during World War II, and his wife Louise "Lou" DeZan Yeager. After the war ended and Bob was discharged, he and Lou and Nancy moved to Colorado, where Bob was raised.

Bob went into business with his brothers Jerry, Dick and Barney, and the Yeagers ran a lumber camp at Cascade Creek outside of Durango, at an elevation of nearly 10,000 feet. Nancy lived the life of a little mountain girl, with her family and the other Yeager brothers living in cabins they had built. Bob and Lou added two boys to the family - Robert "John" in 1946 and Bart in 1949.

After five years in the logging camp, Bob and Lou were ready to try something else - it was especially hard to make a living at 10,000 feet in the wintertime. They decided to go into a partnership with Lou's sister Alba and her husband Bart Conner, and buy a clothing store in Tehachapi called the Federated Department store. They changed the name to Conner and Yeager Department Store and the Yeager family moved to Tehachapi to run it in 1950. The Yeagers soon bought out the Conners, and Yeager's Department Store became a fixture in Downtown Tehachapi for the next 30 years.

Little Nancy grew up helping in the clothing store, and she developed a strong fashion sense, especially for natural fabrics and classic American designs. She became an accomplished seamstress herself, and if she couldn't find a garment she wanted for herself or her girls, she simply sewed it herself.

Nancy was the responsible oldest sister to her three brothers, including Jack, who was born in 1953, and she also had a deep respect and affection for her elders, which she maintained throughout her entire life. Nancy listened to oldtimers when they shared their stories, and she was drawn to earlier lifeways and traditional skills.

She interacted with the world in many natural and earth-connected ways, like spending lots of time outside in wild places, brightening an indoor space with a few wildflowers or blossoms from the yard placed in a vase or canning jar, cooking food from vegetables she had grown herself, savoring sunrises and sunsets, swimming in rivers and the Pacific Ocean. The outdoors were a favorite part of her domain throughout her life.

Nancy graduated from Tehachapi High in 1963, and in 1965 she married her high school sweetheart, Tex White. They moved often, as Tex played football at different colleges, and they lived in Oregon for several years. Their daughter Heidi was born in 1966 and son Ryder in 1970.

Nancy and Tex had a lot of love for each other, but their priorities didn't always align and they went separate ways. Nancy returned to Tehachapi, and on November 4, 1977, she married a widowed firefighter named LeRoy Rice, who had a grown son, Mark, and two young daughters of his own, Jennifer, born in 1970, and Melinda, born in 1972.

I was still just a kid myself when I happened to be at a gathering in Tehachapi after Nancy and LeRoy were married. They were there with the kids, and a woman was asking something about Jennifer or Melinda and saying "stepdaughter," and Nancy politely but firmly told her that "We don't use the term 'step' in our family. We just have our daughters and our sons and we're their parents."

There was no disrespect intended towards Tex, or LeRoy's late wife Phyllis, there had just been a conscious decision to merge their families and make one intact family, based on love and not just genetics. That impressed me at the time when I heard Nancy say it, and I never forgot it.

I was also there years later at a Tehachapi Warrior football game when Ryder was playing for THS. His father Tex was there, and Tex had a grand mal seizure, likely the result of the many concussions he had suffered during his years as a full-throttle tackle football player.

Some of the first people to make it to Tex's side were Nancy and LeRoy, who were also in the stands that night, and they stayed with him and shielded him, and accompanied the gurney to the ambulance to take him to the hospital for examination. For me, another powerful example was set that night - to be classy in stressful situations, and to always support your loved ones.

Unfortunately, Nancy knew personal tragedy as she grew up. Her epic, rugged father Bob Yeager suffered a brain hemorrhage while on a family camping and fishing trip in the Sierra Nevada and died in 1961, when Nancy was just 15 years old. After his death, her mother Lou married William Mantoth, who became Tehachapi's chief of police. Lou was widowed a second time when Chief Mantoth was shot and killed in the line of duty while arresting a suspect in 1968.

Growing up, I always knew who Nancy Yeager was - sometimes she would still help out her mother at Yeager's Department Store on Green Street, located in the building where Tehachapi Hitching Post Theater is now. Nancy was strikingly beautiful, akin to Emmy Lou Harris, and almost looked like she had some Native blood. She had long black hair, which later went to salt-and-pepper, then silver, and finally to white in her grandmother years, and she was stylish and attractive the entire time.

LeRoy Rice worked for the Kern County Fire Department for 32 years, and is a master craftsman and an expert heavy equipment operator. In the early 1990s, Nancy worked for 3 or 4 years for Rogers Helicopters, a private company that provides helicopter firefighting services. Nancy worked on a support crew for the helicopters, and she travelled to many different Western states during the wildfire season.

Nancy and LeRoy were also involved with White Quail Gallery, which featured all Tehachapi artisans. This was a group effort led by the late Gail Shilling Jenkins, who was one of the most talented artists Tehachapi has ever produced. The gallery was located in Downtown Tehachapi, and I was a participant, as well as Hooks Anderson, Peg Kugler and a few other locals.

Nancy and LeRoy would provide crafts to the gallery made using their combined skills, like LeRoy's woodworking and Nancy's talents with spinning, sewing, etc. Together they also built a beautiful home in the Blue Oak woodlands at the base of Black Mountain, even milling some of the lumber with their own saws and artisanal sawmill.

Nancy became involved in the wind industry in Tehachapi from its early days, working for Oak Creek Energy, Zond, Enron and finally GE, until she retired in 2007. Though she was only 4 feet 11 inches tall, Nancy sometimes looked down on the area from 200 feet up on the top of wind turbines. She also checked anemometers in remote areas of East Kern and in many other states. She was both tough and brave.

Since they both retired, Nancy and LeRoy have stayed active, working around their homestead and being parents and grandparents. Nancy adored her grandchildren Maddie Mae, Sage Louise, and Rex Elwood.

Nancy and LeRoy also became active in rendezvous reenactments, frequently participating in annual rendezvous in the Twin Oaks/Back Canyon area. This provided them with an opportunity to camp out and temporarily live using only period-style gear of the kind in use in the 1830s. This fun and educational avocation was well-suited for their diverse combined skill set, such woodworking, sewing, blacksmithing, etc.

Nancy also became a strong advocate and volunteer for the sisters at the Norbertine Monastery up in the Water Canyon/Paradise Valley area. Nancy embraced her Catholic faith more strongly in later years and helped the Norbertine Sisters in multiple ways.

Nancy had many memorable qualities that her family and friends will long remember, but one of them was her mastery of eye contact. You could be at a crowded gathering with many people and distractions, but when Nancy turned her bright eyes on you, you could almost feel that someone was beckoning you, and sure enough, there would be Nancy greeting you by smiling and looking your way.

When she was talking with someone, she gave them her complete attention, and people justifiably felt seen by her. Whether they were a little child, or the very elderly, or any age in between, when Nancy asked how you were doing and checked on you, she would be smiling right at you, and holding you with her gaze. She had a strong sixth sense, and perception of things unseen, and she often already sensed how things were going with the people and places in her life before she had been told.

When someone lives a full life, and makes it into their retirement years, we often figure that their life has mostly run its course. We should be glad that we've had them for as long as we have. But in the case of someone who is still as vivacious and dynamic as Nancy Robin Rice, it doesn't seem like long enough. A person can reach nearly 80 years old like she did, but when you're thinking they might be around for another 10 or 15 years, 79 is simply not long enough. And it is shocking and painful to lose them.

But nonetheless I'm trying to celebrate the life of my dear and cherished friend Nancy Rice, and be glad that the Tehachapi Mountains were blessed for so long by this memorable and multifaceted jewel of a woman. . . .

Services will be held on Thursday, July 25 at St. Malachy's Catholic Church in Tehachapi.

In lieu of flowers, please donate to the The Norbertine Sisters at 17831 Water Canyon Road Tehachapi, CA USA 93561 or http://www.norbertinesisters.org/donate/.

Wood Family Funeral Service has been entrusted with her care. For condolences go to http://www.woodmortuary.net/.