Obituary of Nancy Fettig Minton

Mrs. Nancy Fettig Minton passed away April 20th, 2015 at the age of 88. Born in Indiana in 1926 where she was raised, she entered Purdue University in 1944 and promptly met her soon-to-be husband. She married both the man and his Air Force career. Together they built a very good living and raised six children, setting each of them off into the world as well. Her contribution to this lifelong partnership was her indomitable will to push the family forward and keeping them intact. In that process, her aesthetic and wry sense of humor seeped into the lives of those around her. In their early days of constant moves, she showed the skills of a field marshal in her ability to manage and relocate her family while her husband was frequently away. In these moves, she travelled: Hawaii in the early days, upstate New York during the Cuban Missile Crisis, from Alabama to Kansas to DC. Then came their life in the commercial world of airlines and broader vistas. Back to Purdue, but then on to Singapore and Hawaii again and eventually settling simultaneously in Reston VA and a house in the Shenandoah Mountains. With children heading off to university, she started to have the time and resources to live more broadly, travel well, occasionally get off to go dance (and a striking couple they made!). For retirement, they chose Florida. This was no accident; she loved the beach and still pined for Hawaii of the '50s. But Florida was not Hawaii. After returning to Reston, she started to develop a plan to keep their scattered clan together: the yearly family beach vacation. Again, a military planner might be impressed with her maneuvers to rope her children into this. Her children still thank her for the resulting cohesion of the family. She and her husband, Col. Joseph Paul Minton, USAF Ret., remained near Washington DC and finally settled in an Armed Forces retirement community nearby, where she could still enjoy her fine living (always within their means), her love of spicy exotic meals, and the frequent visits of family, now grown to eighteen and including three great grandchildren. Her faith in the Catholic Church was her spiritual rock and her family the anchor in this world. The occasional martini with her husband was the lubricant to keep all the moving pieces working together. She lost one of her brood to cancer but is survived by her sister, her husband, the other children, and the extended family. We will all miss her smile; a gift given not automatically, but all the brighter for that. Funeral arrangements are being handled through Adams-Green Funeral Home in Herndon, VA. Friends are invited to attend a Funeral Mass at 12 noon on Thursday, April 23 at St. Joseph's Catholic Church, 750 Peachtree Street, Herndon, VA. Expressions of sympathy may be made by contributions to the Catholic Charities (www.catholiccharitiesusa.org) or Cornerstones (formerly Reston Interfaith, www.cornerstonesva.org).