Saturday, August 31, 2024
Nina Florence Ellington Collier
January 20, 1935 – January 12, 2024
Nina wrote the following in 1981:
“January was cold in Minneapolis, the night I was born- 20 degrees below zero and the next night 40 degrees below. My father, a Methodist minister, at church the next morning led the worship service, preached his sermon, and then announced the new arrival-me.
Nine months later, my father transferred to Washington, taking a church in Seattle. The church was heavily in debt. Creditors were pounding on the door. The Parsonage where we lived had no hot water and little heat. Hot water had to be hauled from the church next door.
The next few years brought moves to Chehalis, Pullman, Lewiston and Tacoma, bringing excitement, new neighborhoods to explore, new friends, but sadness when we left each city. World War II came and with it, many weddings in our living room, and dinner visits with servicemen and with grieving parents, as men went missing in action or were reported killed. Our entire family was very much a part of the life of the church, and I learned early to relate to many kinds of people any time of day or night.
School was a pleasure and quite easy for me. Grammar school and junior high were spent in Tacoma. We moved to Seattle again. In my junior year at Garfield High School in Seattle, I applied to be an exchange student to Germany. I was selected and got very busy learning German. At this time, we moved to another church, in the town of Chelan.
The year in Germany was rich and full of new experiences. 1952 was still a time of shortages. I learned what hunger was like. An unheated house in winter in northern Germany was very cold. Some friends taught me to ski. And I learned to walk wherever I needed to go.
I returned to Tacoma and enrolled in the University of Puget Sound, majoring in Speech and Drama and minoring in German, and taking teacher training courses. After graduation I spent a year in Boston. To learn a job skill, I worked in reducing salons.
I met my first husband in Boston. We married in 1959. We moved to Long Beach, California where he joined the staff of a large downtown church.
In 1962 we moved to a small village in Northern California where my husband had his first single pastorate. Our son Breean was born there on Christmas Day. We then moved to San Mateo, where our son Kevin was born. My husband joined the staff of another large downtown church. A year later, we moved to Mill Valley.
This was a time of fermentation and change in our marriage. We had a final separation in 1969 and a divorce in 1971. I returned to school, taking a fifth year for a teaching credential and became a reading specialist. I worked part time with gifted children and remedial readers.
In 1973, I married Jon Collier. We bought a house in Oakland where he worked as an architect. I started graduate studies at Hayward State University in educational psychology. Our life was pleasant and active with many friends. I found good private schools for Breean and Kevin.
Wanting to be closer to my mother and two siblings, my goal for a long time was to return to the Northwest. In 1977. Jon was hired as a consultant-teacher at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. It is wonderful to live in a small caring community. We love the open spaces around us and the opportunity for hikes. Breean and Kevin have done very well in high school here.
We are in a fine church. A married couple at this church asked us if we would consider caring for a baby boy who came here from Guatemala. This has been a rich experience that has brought our entire family much happiness. Estuardo came to us when he was 14 months old, weighing only 12 pounds, covered with scabies, eczema and a staph infection and too weak to sit up or crawl or walk. He is now 21 months old. He has just had the second of three surgeries to repair his cleft lip and cleft palate. The surgeries were very successful, but he will need speech therapy. His transformation amazes even those of us who are with him day-to-day. If he can be adopted, we feel confident that he would continue to thrive with us.
I feel that my entire life is built on each event, some more critical than others. I am grateful for the family I was born into and the life we had together. I am very grateful to be the natural mother of Breean and Kevin, who at 18 and 15, give me enormous pleasure and good relationships. I am also grateful for Jon's children, Andrea and David. David, who lived with us during high school, taught me a great deal about music.
The community of the local church and the greater church, as well as my personal faith, are a very sustaining, integral part of my life. The gift of my loving husband truly ties my life together and makes possible my life as I know it today. I am very, very fortunate. I know that life is brief and yet what I do with each moment can bring long meaning to myself and others. My goal is to continue to learn, change, and meet the challenges as opportunities.”
It was forty years ago that Nina wrote this autobiography. Meeting Parkinson’s disease and then Parkinson’s dementia shortly later, was a challenge and a change that she learned from and faced with much courage and persistence as she bore its toll.
Nina is preceded in death by her sister Sarah Jewell Slind but survived by her brother Bill Ellington (Judy), sons Breean Beggs (Laurie) and Kevin Beggs (Dianna) and Estuardo Ben Collier (April), her stepdaughter Andrea Mulders (Hans), her stepson David Collier (Suzanne), her foster-daughter Kim Schram and 11 grandchildren and many nieces and nephews.
Her family invites you to a Celebration of Life at noon on August 9, 2024 at the Lake Chelan United Methodist Church, followed by a luncheon reception and fellowship, and then a graveside remembrance at 3:00pm at the Chelan Fraternal Cemetery. Please RSVP to bencollier960@gmail.com if you can join us for the reception.
