Nancy's Page

In Memoriam Of Nancy Paul ​

December 3, 1956 - March 18, 2000

If you posted a lost-and-found-report before Christmas of 1999, you have probably spoken to Nancy. She was one of PET FBI's original volunteers. She had great empathy for people in distress and an equally great affection for animals.

She volunteered to monitor our voice mail messages and checked many times over the course of each day, so that no one who called PET FBI ever had to wait very long for a response.

Nancy made it her personal mission to contact everyone who had ever posted a lost and found report to offer encouragement, to see if they needed advice, and to be sure that all the information in the lost and found database was up to date. She would spend hours on the phone helping people place a pet they had found but could not keep. She regularly printed out all the reports, made notes after talking to people, and kept a sharp eye out for matches. She was a conscientious, caring, invaluable and irreplaceable person who performed a great community service.

Phone conversations with Nancy were always punctuated with little asides to the members of her personal menagerie. She had two dogs, Cassie and Sammy (Sampson) and three cats Lucifer, Tabatha, and Chelsea and always addressed them with terms of endearment.

One of my fondest memories of Nancy is from the time she took me to visit the Delaware County Humane Society, where she also volunteered. She had brought several tins of treats with her and she went from cat to cat, addressing each one tenderly, and seeing to it that each shelter animal got some attention and affection and a little treat.

Nancy also loved nature and had enjoyed living in Montana and Minnesota. She looked forward to fishing trips with her Dad and was fond of flying with him in his vintage airplane. She had a great zest for life and lived it to the fullest. Although she suffered from lupus for many years, she remained upbeat, cheerful and uncomplaining. Some of her acquaintances were surprised to learn that she was not in the best of health. She succumbed to the ravages of lupus on Saturday, March 18, 2000 in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit of at the Ohio State University Medical Center. With a tenacious grip on life, she fought valiantly through numerous surgeries for three months in SICU.

In one of her last email messages to me Nancy sent some wishes for the New Year. Some were humorous, some were serious. Here are the last two wishes, which are particularly poignant now:

"May you remember to say I love you at least once a day to your spouse, your child, your parent; but not to your secretary, your nurse, your masseuse, your hairdresser or your tennis instructor.

May we live as intended, in a world at peace and the awareness of the beauty in every sunset, every flower's unfolding petals, every baby's smile and every wonderful, astonishing, miraculous beat of our heart."

-NANCY PAUL