Nancy Dressler Obituary
tulsa, California, United States
April 11, 1917 - September 10, 2022
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Nancy Dressler Obituary
Apr 11, 1917 - Sep 10, 2022
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Nancy DresslerVentura, CANancy Dressler passed away in Ventura, California, after a brief illness, on August 26, 2017, surrounded by family. She was 100 years old.Nancy Lee Noonan was born on April 11, 1917 at Christian Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri to Pauline (nee White) and John Loyal Noonan. She was the eldest of five children. Before she entered school, she lived in Kansas City, moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and then returned to Kansas City. When she was seven years old she moved with her family to Pearland, Texas where her father had purchased a fig tree ranch and started an electrical light installation and house wiring business. While living there, her mother ran the ranch while her father maintained a traveling sales business in which he sold electrical light fixtures.Nancy's father passed away when she was nine years old, and her mother was left a widow with five children. The family then lived with Nancy's grandmother in Saint Louis, where Nancy grew up. She graduated from Soldan High School in 1935, and attended Culver-Stockton College in Canton, Missouri, where she was a cheerleader before she contracted pneumonia during the winter of 1936 and was forced to leave college due to ill health after only one semester.From 1936, after leaving college, until 1942, when she married, Nancy worked in secretarial and bookkeeping positions for several companies, including the YWCA and The Mexican American Hat Company. For a while she worked for Supply Division, Inc. located at Lambert Airport in Robertson, Missouri (which is now the Saint Louis International Airport).While vacationing with a friend in Cedarville, Michigan during the summer of 1939 she met Donald Werner and Kenneth Dressler of Akron, Ohio and briefly dated Don. During the summer of 1935, Don and Ken had built a hunting cabin on land that Don's parents had given him and, in 1939, Don and Ken were spending the summer in the cabin. Donald served in the Army during World War II as a meteorologist and before being sent to his wartime assignment in Greenland, he was stationed at Scott Air Field near Lebanon, Illinois, which is near Saint Louis. It was at that time that Nancy and Donald began dating again and they married in 1942 before he left for Greenland. After the war Don applied for and was granted a consul job with the State Department and received his requested assignment in Greenland. Nancy was hired as the secretary to the consul. Don and Nancy moved to Greenland in February 1946 and while there, Nancy gave birth to a daughter, Lee Ann Werner.In August 1948, while spending the summer in Cedarville, Michigan after returning from Greenland, Donald was killed in an aircraft accident during a fishing trip by float plane into Canada. During the winter of 1951, while visiting a friend in Florida, Nancy was introduced to a dentist, Dr. Vason, who offered her a job as a dental assistant in his practice. She worked as a dental assistant in Mount Dora, Florida for a year between the winter of 1951 and the winter of 1952. On February 2, 1952, she married Lt. Kenneth Dressler in Mount Dora, Florida.Ken's career in the Air Force took the family around the world, including the western, midwestern, and southern United States, Spain, the Philippines, and Hawaii. During their travels, Nancy gave birth to three sons, Terry, Todd, and Brian.Ken retired from the United States Air Force in 1970 and the family returned to the home they had built in 1954 in Ventura, California. Ken sold real estate in Ventura from 1971 until 1983. Nancy volunteered in the women's auxiliary (Pink Ladies) in the gift shop at Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura from 1970 until 2010.In 1980 Ken and Nancy bought a home in Kalapana on the Big Island of Hawaii, where they would spend half of each year. On April 23, 1990, the Kilauea volcano lava flow from the K'pa'ianah' vent flowed into the community of Kalapana and destroyed Ken and Nancy's home in Kalapana Gardens. Ken and Nancy rebuilt at a location close to the ocean near the town of Pahoa in a community called Hawaiian Beaches. They continued to spend half the year in Hawaii thereafter for the remainder of their life together. Ken and Nancy made many friends in Kalapana and Pahoa, where they were very much loved.Ken died in Hawaii in 2010 after 58 years of marriage to Nancy. Nancy continued to live in both Ventura and Hawaii, spending about half the year in each location through 2014, after which advanced age prevented her from traveling to Hawaii. In April of 2017 she celebrated her 100th birthday at a party attended by more than 100 of her friends and relatives.Nancy is survived by her four children: Lee Ann Green (Chet), Terence Dressler (Janis), Todd Dressler, and Brian Dressler (Wendy); six grandchildren: Melanie Rodriguez (Andres), Lehua Alvarez, Angelina Kissida (Jon), Nicholas Dressler (Tara), Terra Dressler, and Tyler Dressler; and six great-grandchildren: Keein, Kris, and Kalei Alvarez, Juliana Rodriguez, Rayn Kissida, and Annabel Dressler.Nancy will rest next to her beloved husband Ken at Arlington National Cemetery.
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