School Bus Driver for 41 years
(July 1938 – February 22, 2021)
Nancy Cain Lavoie was widely known throughout Montgomery, where she had been a school bus driver for 41 years. She died quietly in her home on February 22, following a five-year battle with myeloma.
Nancy was first and foremost a homemaker. Her life was centered around the house her father built at the top of Ludlow Avenue hill, where she lived from the July 1938, when her mother brought her home from Princeton Hospital, till the day she died. Her girlhood dream of a home and family had been realized to the full.
Both her father, Edgar Cain, a builder, and mother Helen Nelson Cain, were from old-line local families, and this bright, pretty, promising daughter could look forward to college and a career when she graduated from Princeton High School. But Nancy chose instead to marry Fred Lavoie, who had been her classmate since their earliest days at Harlingen School. Together they made her dream come true-—with four children raised under the roof her father had built and an added mother-daughter wing rounding out their family.
For Nancy, the basic busyness of cooking, cleaning, and hanging out the wash were the background for countless other pursuits. Like mother and grandmother before her, she was a great cook, cream puffs were a specialty. She wore out her first sewing machine. Fred got her another and she was the go-to person of the make-and-mend school, and an artist at dressing her collection of antique dolls to perfection. She also knit endlessly.
A big garden out back yielded shelves of canned goods, and a full Freezer. There was room left over for lots and lots of pretty flowers. She delighted in family days at the beach and rooting for the Belle Mead ball team. Best of all was country music and dancing, anytime, anywhere, Nancy and Fred were there having a ball. They also loved traveling together to places that were new and different.
Neighborliness and friends were a way of life. Phase Ten was a favorite card game. The challenge of pocket puzzles just had to be solved and when day was done, Nancy loved reading novels in bed.
Last year Fred and Nancy celebrated 65 years of sharing a life they loved. Fred, now left alone, takes comfort in the children she gave him: Karen Lavoie Coleman and her husband Pat; Laurie Lavoie Woodrick; Fred Michael “Mickey” Lavoie; and Beth Lavoie Mears and husband Kevin; seven grandchildren; and three great grandchildren.
The family plans to have a memorial service when Covid subsides and spring has returned. ■
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