Obituary for Nancy Mix Yeomans Nancy Mix Yeomans of Fair Grove, MO died Sunday, December 2, 2018 at home. She is survived by her mother, Stine Mix, and her husband of thirty-nine years Mike Yeomans, her son Jack and his wife Dania, her siblings Bart Mix and Holly Kennerly and their spouses, four nieces, four grandnieces and three grandnephews. She is also survived by her mother-in-law, Martha Kastner, and sister-in-law Patty Thiel and husband Steve.
Born in 1956 in Shawnee, OK, to George and Stine Mix, she was a 1974 graduate of Glendale High School, where she distinguished herself as one of the very few females interested in shop and drafting classes. She continued in this course and graduated from Missouri State University with a B.S. in Industrial Management in 1978. Employed by Kraft Foods as a draftsman in 1976, she became the first woman industrial engineer in Kraft company-wide after graduation.
In 1988, she was hired by Mars, Incorporated, chocolate division, and served as a shift supervisor, shift superintendent, assistant plant manager, and several management positions at Mars Chocolate North America headquarters in Hackettstown, NJ. Retired from the stress of corporate life in 2006, Nancy returned to the Springfield area and was reborn a quilter. A seamstress since her college days, her interest in sewing clothes quickly ceased as her love of quilting flourished.
She quilted almost every Wednesday with Lynn, Dedia, and Helen in Bolivar, MO. These quilting friends became a life-line to her when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2013. She was also active in the Ozark Piecemakers Quilt Guild in Springfield and especially enjoyed the Saturday Strippers group.
She also taught classes in wool dyeing and appliqué, how to shop at thrift stores for quilting materials, and the history of quilting through quilt bed turnings. This past spring she even presented a bed turning at Missouri State for educators from South America. Although making quilts of elaborate patterns and beautiful new fabrics appealed to Nancy, her first love was making scrap quilts from gently used cotton shirts and sheets purchased from thrift stores.
The hunt for thrift shop “treasures” was always a delightful way to add to her fabric stash. Nancy also enjoyed finding unfinished, old quilt tops and blocks at flea markets and antique stores and turning them into beautiful quilts. She felt that if she didn’t show them love in this way, no one would ever appreciate the quilting skills of the original makers.
And Nancy left behind some of her own UFOs (unfinished quilting projects) that now friends and family will complete for her. Nancy also cherished vintage Singer sewing machines. She and Mike learned to repair and service them, and she so successfully praised the wonders of these old machines, that many quilters came to use them.
She became the for all things “Singer” to her quilting companions. Since retiring, Nancy enjoyed taking Carnival cruises—especially when her son Jack was the sound technician on board. In the last two years, she made two transatlantic cruises, a Mediterranean cruise, and a visit to Cuba.
Her love of traveling also included camping in their vintage trailer—one that was already “older” when purchased shortly after she and Mike married. Nancy also assisted her husband Mike at heritage festivals throughout Missouri, where he made rye coil baskets and she demonstrated wool appliqué. Of course both wore period correct clothing sewn by Nancy, and quilts provided the decor.
Mike was truly the love of her life, although he had to compete with Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy and more recently with Poldark. Mike also had another responsibility—to respond to all the acts that Nancy loved to volunteer him to do—dressing up as Santa, performing Irish music, cooking brisket for church suppers, and countless hours of assisting her Quilt Guild. Another special interest of Nancy’s was her love of dogs.
Having grown up with toy poodles, she became the mom to Phoebe, a large, sweet pit bull, when she married Mike. Later the two of them discovered a new love—adopting retired from racing greyhounds. Both Nikki and Kallie brought to the family companionship, love, laughter, and a little craziness, specifically, Kallie’s extreme fondness for water in which broccoli had been cooked.
In the past couple of years, Nancy received her “dog fix” by babysitting her canine-nephew, Freddy, whose goofiness was endearing to her. Nancy always loved Dove dark chocolate, hot tea, and Waffle House, but in the past couple of years, she greatly enjoyed the comfort of black licorice, root beer, cream chipped beef on toast, Sonic tater tots, corn dogs and limeades, and most recently grape slushes. Nancy was always busy sewing or doing handwork.
As her husband says, “if you wanted to find Nancy, go look in her sewing room. If she wasn’t sewing, she wasn’t happy”. Now we know that she is in heaven sewing angel wings, but only after reorganizing the heavenly sewing room and servicing their vintage Singer sewing machines.
The family would like to thank St Luke’s Hospital of Kansas City, and especially to Dr. Pluard and his staff of the Koontz Advanced Breast Cancer Center. Since 2013 Nancy struggled against her breast cancer. But as she often said, she didn’t want to be known as losing the fight against cancer, because “you can’t fight unless you have a fair chance to win, and nothing is fair about metastatic breast cancer”.
The family asks for memorials, if desired, to be made to METAvivor, which honors your generosity by ensuring that 100% of donations goes toward supporting grants for metastatic breast cancer research. To send flowers or a memorial gift to the family of Nancy Mix Yeomans please visit our Sympathy Store.
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