Nancy Barton

Nancy Booth Stern Barton
B. March 10, 1928 – D. May 28, 2014
Nancy Barton passed into blessed eternal life early Wednesday, May 28. She was born March 10, 1928, to Walter B. Stern and Marian Booth Stern in St. Louis Missouri—both of whom she loved and respected dearly and both of whom she lost when she was still a young mother.
Nancy grew up on East 50th Street in Indianapolis—she got straight A’s at Shortridge High School where she graduated with honors. She went off to “finishing school” at Ward Belmont College in Nashville where proper young girls were educated. There she studied botany and graduated to return to Indianapolis and accept a position at the Indiana State Library. There she began a life-long devotion to genealogical research. She got much of her family tree sorted out long before there was any such thing as ancestry.com.
She spent the summers of her youth at the Rivera Swim Club—where she met her husband of almost 66 years, Thomas M. Barton, when he was a young slender-GI recently discharged (honorably) from the Navy after a tour in Guam after the Second World War. She and Tom married on August 4, 1948, and raised five children, first in Indianapolis and later in Cincinnati and West Chester (Ohio), where Tom found success working as a regional service rep with Ford Motor Company—until he decided to chuck it all and start his own auto repair business and later a heavy-equipment excavation business. Nancy devoted her life to her children and her husband and often worked as a bookkeeper for Tom’s various endeavors.
She never forgot her education in botany and loved to take the children hiking in Indiana’s state parks to point out the trees and wildflowers and identify the species and habitats of each one (even though kids were a pretty hard sell). For many years she grew a huge, thriving vegetable garden in the valley by the creek at their home on Tylersville Road in West Chester. Later, Tom and Nancy purchased a farm in Seven Mile, Ohio, and the garden grew again—but this move included the installation of an in-ground swimming pool to satisfy Nancy’s love for the water.
In their retirement years, they sold the farm and took off in an RV to see America. The old RV took them around the country time and again for nine years. They loved the company they found in the RV parks and took in the sights of God’s creation from the West Coast to Padre Island to Mystic, Connecticut. On their final tour of the country, they drove the hard road to Alaska so they could say they had seen all of the Continental United States.
Once they decided to settle down again, they made their new home in the foothills of the Smokey Mountains in Madisonville, Tennessee, and their church home in Sweetwater—Christ Presbyterian Church. There they found a warm community—friends in the church and at the senior center in Madisonville. Nancy returned to her crafts including stitching Afghans, glazing ceramics, and sketching wildflowers. This move also included an indoor pool for the water-loving Nancy. Tom and Nancy remained in Southeast Tennessee until only recently when they moved back to Ohio to be near family.
Four of her children survive along with her dear husband Tom. Her survivors include daughter Marianne with husband Alan McCall and children Tim Johnson, Rose Hagans, and Rob Johnson; daughter Kathleen with husband David Plesich and children Micah and Daniel Grambsch and Alexandra Silanskis; son Thomas Michael with wife Victoriana and children Stephanie and Christopher; daughter Nancy Jane with husband Eddie Hannah and children Eddie, Rebekah Hanson, Melanie Gerstorff and Clay; and daughter Christena’s children Sarah Helton, Danielle Stidham and Christopher Karle. She is also survived by 15 grandchildren, and 27 great grandchildren (with two more on the way). She is preceded in death by her parents and her dear daughter Christena Karle. Nancy will be remembered fondly by her children, her friends and her church family—all of whom are confident she has been joyfully received into the arms of her dear Lord Jesus.