How a smiling friend continues to send us a message, even though she’s no longer here

If I have learned one thing in this past week, it is this: When someone stays on your mind, give them a call, or stop by to see them. Just reach out to them.

Because, you just don’t know…

I’m feeling this way because of the recent death of my dear friend and colleague Nancy Ancrum. Nancy died in her sleep, on the night of Feb. 9, “with a smile on her lips,” her grieving husband George Fishman told me the day after she died.

It was so like Nancy to die smiling. When I tell you that she had the kind of smile that reached out and pulled you in, believe me.

I, along with many of her other colleagues, first met the tall, slim beautiful Black young woman when she first came to work at the Miami Herald. I was old enough to be her mom (my late son, Rick was only several months younger than Nancy). Yet, I respected her leadership. As a young editor, she often had to edit my copy when she worked in the Northwest Neighbors section in the early 1980s.

There is nothing that I can say about her dynamic career at the paper that our dear Howard Cohen hasn’t already written about in his obituary of Feb. 10. My thoughts about Nancy are personal.

While Nancy and I didn’t hang out like two young friends, we stayed in touch. She was one of my cheerleaders. She was there in the congregation to celebrate with me when my first grandchildren were christened.

And when she and George were ready to get married, I was honored when she asked me and another colleague, Ruth Beaman, who died two years ago, to help her as wedding co-coordinators. We were delighted to be involved.

Nancy had found a vintage wedding dress and asked me to make a headpiece to match. I made one of a circle of flowers with streaming ribbons. She loved it.

On the day before the wedding, Nancy rented a room for Ruth and I, at the Holiday Inn, to be near Alice Wainwright Park, where the wedding would take place the next day.

Early in the morning on the day of the wedding, Ruth and I met the park attendants who brought white folding chairs for the guests, and placed them under a canopy of trees in the area where Nancy and George would exchange vows. Ruth and I hung streams of ribbons from the branches of the trees. It was a beautiful day and we wanted everything to be pretty for our Nancy. It was.

I remember watching George as he walked into the area, to wait for his bride. He looked so handsome.

He wore a white dinner jacket and black trousers and black and white wing-tip shoes. He looked like a groom out of the 1940s, which is what they wanted.

Then it was time for the bride, who walked into the area with her handsome father. Nancy giggled a lot — I thought it was because she was nervous. Later she told me her dad kept telling her funny jokes as they walked into the park.

As the ceremony started, one of the park workers, who had helped us decorate and place the chairs, was so in awe of the wedding, he didn’t realize that he was standing close enough to the couple and the minister to be a part of the wedding party.

As he stood there smiling, a nervous Ruth whispered to me: “He needs to move. He will be in all the pictures.”

I said, “Let me handle it,” and I walked over to the man, touched him gently on the shoulder and offered him my arm. He was still smiling as I led him away. I think he thought I was flirting with him!

It was so like Nancy to want to have her wedding in a park with butterflies fluttering around and birds tweeting from the trees.

And it is so like George to want us to honor her memory by planting flowers, especially milkweeds, that attract butterflies. So, I’ve got to up my game and plant more butterfly-attracting plants. I got a gentle reminder of this a few days after Nancy died: A beautiful tiger butterfly fluttered gently near my shrubbery.

I’d like to think it was a message from Nancy.

Social justice awards

Warm congratulations to the three South Floridians who were among the five in the state awarded 2024 Social Justice Fellows. They are: Troy Adam Duffie and logan Meza of Miami, and Lena Kalandijian of Parkland.

▪ Troy Adam Duffie is associate director for the Center for Financial Markets at the Milken Institute and has a background in venture capital social impact investing and affordable housing. He serves as chairman of the board of the St. John Community Development Corp., a multimillion-dollar, not-for-profit developer of affordable housing in South Florida, and is leading a team to create a faith-based nonprofit to advocate for and build affordable housing in the Denver Metropolitan area. He is the son of Troy and Cecily-Robinson Duffie of North Miami.

▪ Iogan Meza is a Black American, Colombian, trans/nonbinary artist and cultural organizer who was born and raised in Miami, and who at 17, was a co-founder of S.O.U.L., Sisters Leadership Collective, at 17. The organization organizes marches and mobilizations like the Florida March for Black Women. She also helped to launch Black Girls Day at the Capitol, which mobilized Black women, girls, and TGNC (transgender and gender non-conforming/gender expansive) folks to ride the freedom bus from throughout Florida to the state Capitol to meet with legislators and practice Black joy as resistance.

▪ Lena Kalandijian, of Parkland, is a Chancellor’s Scholar at Vanderbilt University studying human and organizational development, with minors in business and sociology. She is driven by a profound commitment to youth empowerment and violence prevention. She is currently working with Sandy Hook Promise’s Youth Lab to develop evidence-based strategies to foster safer communities. She took her advocacy to Capitol Hill in May of 2023, and urged combined support for the STOP School Violence Act which allocates $126 million to increase access to school safety resources.

▪ The other two fellows are Rebecca Desir of Sanford and Libby Cohen of Jacksonville.

The third Social Justice Fellows Program cohort awards were announced by The Memorial Foundation, builders of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The awardees are among 50 emerging leaders nationwide who will be involved in a virtual eight-week curriculum centered around advocacy, community organizing and public policy.