After two decades,Nancy Oliver will step down
BY MARY LANCASTER
Following a career with the town that began in 1980, Human Resources director Nancy Oliver is resigning as of Dec. 22. After working her way up from a "floating" position in the selectmen's office, Oliver has decided to retire and divide her time between Nantucket and Florida.

Oliver: "There have been some one-term wonders, and I say that tongue in cheek."

Oliver began coming to Nantucket in the 1960s to work during summers when she was an English major at Trenton State University and graduate student studying classical American literature at Ryder College. She met her first husband here who commuted when Oliver moved to the island in 1973 to complete her graduate thesis on Herman Melville.

"And I never left," she said.

Oliver and her husband separated and she gave birth in 1974 to their son Aaron. When he started kindergarten in 1980 she took her first job with the town working as a floater in the selectmen's office, with the Historic District Commission and in the finance office, then from 1981 to 1983 she worked in the district court's probation department.

Taking a break, she spent eight years at what she calls her favorite position as a legal assistant in Richard and James Glidden's law firm, during which time she met and married her late husband Don Oliver. In 1991 she thought she wanted to retire, but the need to be busy prompted her to return to the selectmen's office as an administrative assistant.

Suzanne Kennedy had just been hired as the town's executive secretary and current Town Administrator Libby Gibson was already there as assistant executive secretary. When Kennedy left, the title was changed and Gibson became town administrator with Oliver rising to the role of her assistant as well as personnel officer. The two became close friends, and Oliver stayed in those positions until funding to split them and hire a human resources director was approved at the April 2005 Town Meeting.

But circumstances quickly changed for Oliver. When she and her husband returned in May from vacationing in Vero Beach, Don Oliver was ill. He had been diagnosed in 1998 with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, but with occasional treatments he felt relatively healthy. The condition reappeared and he had to begin aggressive chemotherapy, which eventually took a toll on his strength. Since the human resources post was still vacant, Oliver decided she would switch jobs so she could spend more time with her husband.

Last December, his cancer worsened and Oliver took a leave of absence to help care for him at home with support from Charlene Thurston at Hospice and Home Health nurses and aides. Still, despite round-the-clock nurturing in a bed set up in the couple's living room near his treasured collection of Indian arrowheads, Don Oliver succumbed to his disease in January. Though devastated after the loss, Nancy went back to work mid-March, but soon realized how much her life had been altered.

"I knew the day I walked in I wasn't the same person," she said. "I just wanted to get home and be in my house with my little dog. I missed him so much I just knew I couldn't stay here this winter. It's just time to move on. I just have to make my way. I had a lot of support, but at the end of the day you're by yourself. There are still days I wake up and I can't believe he's gone."

In the summer, Oliver told Gibson she would be leaving and gave her official notice last month. She and her one-and-a-half-year-old miniature Schnauzer, Fred, will drive to Vero Beach where she is renting a condo for the winter and wants to look around for something to buy.

While it will be difficult this first time to go back there without her husband, Oliver has a brother and friends nearby and golfing buddies who live in the area. She has no intention of selling the Nantucket house she and Don built together. When she returns next spring she would like to become reinvolved with her church, possibly work part-time and when she feels healed enough, volunteer for Hospice.

"It's one step at a time," said Oliver.

Oliver described her main frustration working for the town as the difficulty in firing people who are not doing their job satisfactorily, because unlike in the private sector, municipal employees can file grievances and seek arbitration.

Her friendship with Gibson is one of the things she will miss most.

"I will miss Libby. Libby and I have been through a lot in the last 15 years filling key positions. One of the most traumatic to fill was finance director. The ups and downs of that search were really a lot," she said. "We had a lot of laughs, too. We joke that in my retirement I might write a book about the revolving door of selectmen. There is so much material. There have been some one-term wonders, and I say that tongue in cheek.

"And after seeing all the selectmen in 15 years, I can personally tell you that Don Oliver was the best selectman," she went on. "He had no agenda. He just wanted to do what was good for the town."

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