Nancy Tuck, 93

Nancy Tuck, 93, of Wareham, Marion, and Holliston, Massachusetts, passed into peace on April 17, 2026, after a long illness. She was born Nancy Gene Norris on September 18, 1932, to Henry and Ruth Norris and was raised in Holliston. She attended Framingham High School and the Women’s College of Greensboro, NC, earning a bachelor’s degree in biology and chemistry in 1954. She married James Valpey and is survived by their three children: Dawn Ronco of Raleigh, NC; Todd Valpey of Weare, NH; and James Mark Valpey of Raleigh, NC. She had four grandchildren: Ben Ronco, James (Jimmy) Valpey Jr., Jesse Ronco, and Andrew Valpey. Jimmy and his wife, Amanda, gave her three great-granddaughters: Tori, Avery, and Aubrey.

Nancy attended the Boston School of Cytotechnology as part of its first-ever class to graduate in 1965. She became a licensed cytotechnologist and was quickly employed by Framingham Union Laboratory. 

After a divorce and marriage to Ralph Tuck, she moved in 1983 to Wareham, the long-loved town where she’d spent vacations on Tempest Knob as a child. She was employed as a medical technologist at St. Luke’s in Middleboro until its closing in 1990. By then she was on her own again. She lived for 32 years in her beloved mobile home on Siesta Drive. She worked as a cytotechnologist at Cape Cod Hospital until her retirement in 1999. In 2015, she moved to Little Neck Village in Marion, where she became an active participant with its Council on Aging. Due to declining health, she moved to All American Assisted Living in 2022.

Nancy was a woman of many talents. She loved to bake, and she served up cookies to many groups, worked the Garden Club bake sales, and more than once won first place for her pies at the Rochester Fair. She was an acrylic painter and gardener extraordinaire, tending multiple gardens of flowers, vegetables, and herbs around her mobile home. After taking a book repair class in Boston after retirement, she served many years as the volunteer book-fixer at the Wareham Free Library. In younger years, she completed difficult crossword puzzles in pen, claiming tongue-in-cheek that she was perfect. She probably wasn’t. In fact, she wanted this notice to say that she enjoyed living One Day at a Time since Feb. 5, 1976, thanks to Alcoholics Anonymous. She served in that organization’s regional delegation for several years and was instrumental in the founding of Evergreen House in Wareham. 

Nancy touched many people with her industrious life, and she is already missed.

A Celebration of Life will be held Saturday, June 20, 2026, at 2 p.m. at the First Congregational Church on 11 Gibbs Ave. in Wareham.