Nancy Louise King
Our loving mother and wife, Nancy Louise King passed away October 8th, surrounded by loving family, after a brief battle with Pancreatic cancer. A tough, strong gal all her life, she gave her cancer a run for it’s money and was a warrior through to the end. Born Nancy Louise Coffer in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania in 1940, she soon moved to Newton Highlands, Massachusetts, before the family decided to move out to California in the mid 1940’s and she lived in San Luis Obispo, San Francisco and Redwood City, and ended back in San Luis Obispo where she attended California Polytechnic State University. There she met and fell in love with her college sweetheart, Bascom Holt King, whom she married in 1960. They moved to Santa Barbara, where Bascom lived with his mother prior to college and settled in with a new house and their first child, Everett. Not long after came his sister, Cassandra to complete the family. Nancy and Bascom lived in their La Cumbre area home together for nearly 60 years, and Nancy lovingly attended to the large backyard, gardening being one of her largest passions, planting fruit tree’s and roses as well as finely engineered vegetable gardens.
Nancy had an education in Early Childhood Development and ran the Goleta Valley Nursery School for many years, becoming a favorite among hundreds of children for her uplifting and loving spirit. Later in life she turned her passion for travel into a business, opening up Magic Carpet Travel Agency with another agent and had the agency for several decades. Nancy was a keen business woman with a good sense for budgeting and enjoyed the benefits of small business ownership. For the last nearly 18 years, she ran another business out of her home, Santa Barbara Custom quilting, which brought her much joy.
Nancy was a very creative woman, trying out any number of crafts , starting with jam making and moved to stained glass making, basket weaving, and hand looming carpets and a long stint with pottery, to name but just a few. And Nancy would dive-in, full force to master her skills and make numerous pieces of each craft before moving to the next. She also was very fond of woodworking and had collected a nice set of tools over the years. But her most favorite mainstay was quilting, and she was a very accomplished quilter and won several awards. She was a member of the Coastal Quilters Guild of Santa Barbara & Goleta and volunteered to quilt hundreds of quilts used by local charity agencies to give comfort to children of abuse, seniors in facilities, etc.
Some of the places Nancy has traveled to include Japan, France, Ireland, England, New Zealand, South America and a rare hard-to-get trek into Bulgaria in the mid 1970’s. Her last trip was with her daughter to France and Ireland in 2019 where she got to fullfill a lifelong dream to see the prehistoric cave paintings in the south of France, as well as the neolithic site Newgrange in Ireland.
Nancy will be remembered for her beautiful smile and bright brown eyes and nearly everywhere she went people instantly warmed up to her. She also had a slightly mischievous streak and great sense of humor, which always brought smiles out of people.
Nancy will reside in our hearts forever but will be missed dearly on this earth. She is survived by her husband, Bascom Holt King, her son Everett, daughter Cassandra and two grandsons as well as a younger sister and a brother.