Nancy Wilson died on Wednesday, April 27, 2011, after a tree fell on her house in Pleasant Grove, Ala., when deadly tornadoes blew across Alabama.PLEASANT GROVE, Alabama --- People, work and talking on the telephone.
Those were the things that family and friends of Nancy Lynn Wilson said the 56-year-old woman loved.
"She never met a stranger." That's what both Wilson's best friend, Sandra Grigsby, and sister, Bessie Wilson, said.
"She was everybody's friend and she was loyal," said Grigsby, who met Wilson in graduate school at the University of Alabama. She said she and Wilson talked on the phone constantly. "We talked about everything," Grigsby said. Wilson loved traveling, gardening, fashion, decorating and potato chips.
Bessie Wilson, younger by one year, said the sisters "talked what seemed like 100 times a day. We were close."
Wilson had been set to retire the next day from the Alabama Department of Human Resources. She was director of the DHR office in Bessemer.
"She worked there for 34 years and she would have worked there for another 34 years if she could," Grigsby said. "She loved that job."
Wilson decided to retire to care for her ailing mother, who lives in Sumter County. The plan was for Wilson to watch her mother during the week, and then return to her home in Pleasant Grove on the weekends.
"Things just didn't work out that way," her sister said.
[RELATED STORY: Pleasant Grove woman was set to retire Friday but killed by fallen tree]
- Read Nancy Wilson's obituary