Nancy Keith

Nancy Keith lived a life of hard work, generosity, and devotion to her family. She was a bright and loving woman whose kind spirit did not betray the hardships she overcame and the sacrifices she made.

Nancy’s life started in the Great Depression and ended in the second decade of the 21st Century. One of her earliest memories formed during the terror of the air-raid blackouts in Buffalo during World War II. Nancy was shy and quiet through much of her childhood. She discovered in herself a preternatural talent for accounting and numbers in high school, eventually leading her to become the first in her family to graduate from college (Miami University, Ohio) in 1960.

Nancy married in 1964 and became a widow in 1967, leaving her to raise her only son, Jay, by herself in a new city on the salary of a junior accounting clerk at Xerox starting in 1968. By the end of that year, however, Xerox decided that Nancy was indispensable to their operations, summoning her to their corporate headquarters on a private plane to close the books on the fiscal year. Through her 25 years with the company, she would go on to earn numerous promotions, accolades and honors. In 1978, Nancy earned her MBA at the Simon School through Xerox’s Executive Development Program but refused the offer of a promotion and relocation to Xerox’s corporate headquarters in Connecticut because (as she would explain only many years later) she did not want to disrupt her son’s childhood.

As a mother, Nancy was resourceful and endlessly supportive. In an era largely without “day care” as we know it today, she somehow found a good-hearted family willing to watch her son while she worked. She valued education greatly and was adamant that her son attend the finest schools she could afford. When she could no longer quite afford these schools, she took out a second mortgage on her home so that Jay could graduate college without student loan debt—another fact that she did not reveal until many years later.

In short, by the time she turned 50, Nancy had successfully raised a son as a single mother in an era where single-parent households of any kind were commonly referred to as “broken homes.” She had purchased and maintained a fine suburban house, had a successful and lauded career in a male-dominated field at an overwhelmingly male workplace, finished a demanding MBA program while working full time and did it all with kindness, grace and a quiet dignity that was her son’s best teacher.

Nancy was an accomplished cook. She never failed to make her son a home-cooked dinner every day even after long hours at Xerox, and later she delighted in cooking family favorites for her grandson, Hugo. She loved hosting her sister’s family during the holidays, and often prepared amazing recipes that were passed down to her from her own mother. The cookbook she created still sees frequent use and remains a prized heirloom of the family.

During her long retirement, Nancy lent her time and talent to many, including the small business run by her sister, Marilyn, and her brother-in-law, Ted. She helped organize Fairport Canal Days for well over a decade, volunteered at Advent House, served on the Board of Perinton Food Shelf, was a member of the Town of Perinton Zoning Board, and assisted her church with a variety of fundraising and accounting tasks.

Nancy’s legacy is one of courage, devotion and love. She is survived by her son, Jay Keith, her grandson, Hugo Keith, her nieces, Beverly Wilkshire, Donna Albert, and Diane Myers, and her grandnephews, Stephen and David Albert.