Nancy Wallace, 93, died peacefully at home in Marblehead on Thursday, Feb. 15. She was a born and bred Marbleheader, born to Anna Pennypacker Upton and Edward Upton on Sept. 2, 1930, in the old Mary Alley Hospital on Franklin Street. She was born Ann Seaver Coolidge Upton, but she was called Nancy from birth. She graduated from Marblehead High School in 1947 and from Smith College with a bachelor’s degree in English in 1951.
On Dec. 26, 1954, she married Bruce A. Wallace, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate and mechanical engineer, in a ceremony at Salem Hospital, where Nancy’s mother was confined with a broken thigh. After their marriage, Nancy and Bruce lived in various locations around the country and even in France for a short time before settling in White Plains, New York, where they lived for 53 years. Nancy was extremely active in the community there, eventually becoming an elected official on the White Plains Common Council. As a councilwoman, she spearheaded the city’s first fair housing law, first cable television contract and significantly increased the amount of green space in the city’s urban development. After leaving the council, she became the executive director of Bronx River Restoration Inc., a nonprofit organization in the Bronx focused on restoring the Bronx River and its adjacent land and community. She was fierce, creative and dedicated in pursuing that mission. And when she retired 23 years later, her seemingly impossible vision of a clean, usable Bronx River with an eight-mile Greenway alongside it had become a reality.
Even when they lived in New York, Nancy and Bruce still spent summer weekends with their children in Nancy’s childhood home on Locust Street in Marblehead. And in 2013, they moved back to Marblehead permanently. Nancy is survived by Bruce, her husband of more than 69 years; her three children: son David Wallace and his wife Jan Bass, daughter Gail Wallace and her husband Harry McDaniel, and daughter Lane Wallace and her husband Ed Cataldo. She is also survived by her sister, Lane Upton Serota, and her three grandchildren, whom she adored: Kern Wallace, Tyler McDaniel and Kinana McDaniel.
A memorial service will be held on Saturday, March 2 at 1 p.m. at the Old North Church, 35 Washington St., with a reception to follow in the parish hall. Burial in Waterside Cemetery will be private. Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at eustisandcornellfuneralhome.com for Nancy’s family.
