Nancy Upchurch's Bio written by her granddaughter, Ashley Upchurch, for her Adult Development Class
Date written: April 24, 2009
"Real Life" Adult Development"

While reading our adult development book and listening to the lectures in class, I kept wondering how many of the concepts discussed in the book would actually take place in my life. Because I am almost 20 years old, I felt that I had experienced at least a few of the topics we had discussed, such as leaving home and maybe even a few of the cohort effects.

For our storybook project, which was designed to help us see how many concepts we studied in class had occurred in the life of a relative, I chose to interview my grandmother. After spending several hours talking with my Grandma about her life, I discovered that many of the things we discussed in class actually took place in her life.

My grandmother, Nancy Anne Allen, was born on July 24, 1935. When she was just six years old, her father, Kenny, enlisted in the Navy for a four-year term following the attacks on Pearl Harbor. After Kenny enlisted and was deployed, Nancy and her mother, Gelda, moved to San Diego to be near him. In San Diego, they experienced many hardships, such as living without Kenny, which made it hard to earn money. It was also difficult to find someone to take care of Nancy while Gelda worked. Because my grandmother did not get to spend very much time with her parents at a young age, she became very attached to her family. Overall, I would say that Grandma's childhood led her to be securely attached to her family today.

After her childhood, my Grandma followed a pretty standard path of adult development. She left home, became a wife, began a career, had children, had her children leave home, became a widow, and had to adjust to living alone. While it may sound like my Grandma's life was pretty typical, she also experienced some non-normative life events. Soon after she graduated from high school in Hagerstown in 1952, Nancy left home. She went on to pursue a nursing degree at Reid Memorial School of Nursing and Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana. Before she graduated in the spring of 1956, she eloped with Ernie Upchurch in October of 1955. They were married at a Methodist church on the Kansas State University campus, where Ernie was going to school to become a veterinarian. They had been dating since high school and thought that they "couldn't wait any longer to get married." Even though they were married, Nancy and Ernie were unable to live together until Nancy finished nursing school. When Nancy graduated from the nursing program, she moved to Kansas to live with Ernie until he graduated. After he graduated, they moved back to Mooreland, Indiana, to start practicing veterinary medicine. Not long after they returned to Indiana, Nancy gave birth to their first son, David Lee.

In the five years following, Nancy and Ernie had three more children: Steven Ray, Jeffrey Allen, and Elizabeth Anne. After all four children were born, Nancy and Ernie decided that, along with raising four children, they would also like to build their own veterinary hospital. In 1969, they started building the Greensfork Veterinary Hospital, which opened in September 1970. Throughout the year's Nancy's working career consisted of assisting Ernie in practicing his veterinary medicine. She did the bookwork and helped him in surgery, where her nursing skills were helpful because the medical treatment of animals is similar to the treatment of humans.

On April 6, 1968, Nancy experienced a non-normative life event. Gunpowder, in the basement of a store in downtown Richmond, not far from their home in Greensfork, was ignited by a gas leak. It happened on a Saturday morning, a time when many people, including children going to a Saturday morning movie, were in the downtown area. After hearing a plea on the radio for any nurses in the surrounding area to go to Reid Memorial Hospital to help with the injured, my Grandma headed to Richmond to help. To this day, because of the death and injury she experienced, Nancy calls this day the worst day of her nursing career.

Along with raising children and helping Ernie run the vet hospital, Nancy needed some time for leisure. She found that she enjoyed growing roses and started her own rose garden in 1970. She grew Hybrid T roses and had her garden for 22 years. At one time, she had as many as 170 rose bushes. In addition to rose gardening, Nancy and Ernie bought a lake home in 1986, which they deemed the "Dew Drop Inn." They visited their lake home as often as possible and intended to retire there. Nancy's leisure activities of rose gardening and going to the lake are both examples of unconditional leisure because they are unrelated to her work at the vet hospital.

Just as all her children left home, Nancy's parents, Kenny and Gelda, became very ill. During this time, Nancy experienced the generational squeeze because she was trying to care for her sick parents and remain very involved in taking care of her four children, who were all pursuing some kind of education beyond high school. Then, in 1988, both of her parents passed away. Not too long after their death, Nancy and Ernie became grandparents. In total, they had four grandchildren. Their first grandchild, Ashley, was born in 1989, followed by three more grandkids: Andrew, Matthew, and Rebecca.

Another non-normative life event that Nancy experienced was becoming a widow at a much younger age than what is considered typical. In May of 1997, when she was just 61 years old, Nancy became a widow when Ernie suddenly passed away. After Ernie's death, Nancy found it difficult to adjust to life alone. When he died, Nancy had to sell the vet hospital and the large home they had built. After selling the house, Nancy moved to Richmond, Indiana, in December of 1997.

When Nancy moved to Richmond, she lived alone and was a grandparent, yet had no one to really take care of besides herself. Soon, she became lonely and sought out an opportunity to keep herself busy and to help her adjust to living alone. It was at this point that she started volunteering at the Richmond Eye Center. Shortly after she started volunteering, nursing positions on the surgery side of the eye center became available, and she was offered a job as a recovery room nurse.

Today, Nancy enjoys working part-time at the eye center, spending time with her children and grandchildren, and volunteering for different organizations around Richmond, including a mentor program. Additionally, Nancy is on the board of several committees, attends almost every basketball game that her two grandsons play in, and enjoys taking family vacations to Arizona. Essentially, all these activities are typical for a person in retirement. Clearly, my Grandma Nancy has gone through many of the stages and social roles that we have discussed in our adult development class. I enjoyed interviewing and talking with her about the many things she has done in her life thus far. It was a learning experience to discover all that she went through and how her experiences have made her the person she is today. In her life, she has been a wife, mother, worker, grandparent, and a volunteer, among many other things. I hope that in my life I will have as many interesting and positive experiences as my Grandma has had thus far in her life.