Service Set June 8 For Nancy J. Ricketts, 99

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Created on Wednesday, 05 June 2024 15:23

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Nancy J. Ricketts

Nancy J. Ricketts, an archivist who wrote of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, her own life, and that of her father, Ed Ricketts, died June 1 at Mt. Edgecumbe Medical Center. She was 99.
Services will be 1 p.m. Saturday, June 8, at St. Peter’s. A small reception will be held afterward at the See House.
Nancy was born Nov. 28, 1924, in Pacific Grove, California, the daughter of Edward Flanders Robb Ricketts and Anna Barbara Makar Ricketts.
She attended Sunset Elementary School in Carmel, California, where her father, Ed Ricketts, a marine biologist, had a lab. He came to the Sitka area in 1932 gathering specimens for his intertidal ecology studies, and in 1939, along with Sitkan Jack Calvin, published the classic “Between Pacific Tides.”
After her parents separated, her mother moved to Washington, and Nancy graduated from Bremerton High School. In 1940, they came to Sitka, where preparations were being made for war. Nancy attended school, made friends, and liked the town.
Nancy returned to Carmel after leaving Sitka, and not long afterward met Perry  Pickering at the USO at Fort Ord. They were married, and had two children, Edward F. Pickering and Christina.
Nancy and Perry divorced in 1958, and he returned to Baltimore.
In 1962 she married Rudy Branlund, who had six children and was in the U.
S. Navy. After he retired, he became interested in the U.S. Forest Service and in 1974 came to Sitka to work.
In the years after coming to Sitka, Nancy was a library assistant at Sheldon Jackson College, where she earned her bachelor of arts degree. At age 50, she earned a master’s degree at California State Dominguez Hills.
She wrote “A Brief History of St. Peter’s By-the-Sea Episcopal Church, to the Year 2000,” published in 2006.  Her memoir, “Becoming Myself,” was published in 2020, and in 2015 she contributed an essay about her father in a collaborative book on Ed Ricketts,  “From Cannery Row to Sitka, Alaska,” edited by Jan Straley.
“My mom was truly a loving and considerate person, who volunteered for the Sitka Historical Society, and for  Baranof Elementary School for 20-plus years, helping first-graders learn to read,” her daughter Chris Yarbrough said.
She had a wide range of interests – she enjoyed sewing, gardening, reading, crossword puzzles, knitting, writing and walking.
Nancy was preceded in death by her son Edward Pickering, in 2014, and by stepchildren Ingrid Wohlberg, Bob Branlund, Bill Branlund and Wally Branlund.
She is survived by her daughter, Christina Yarbrough of Susanville, California; granddaughters Stacey Barnetche and Lisa Miller, both of Susanville; great-grandchildren Kevin and Melissa Barnetche and David and Jodi Vicondoa, all of Susanville, and Kyle Barnetche of Idaho; stepchildren David Branlund of California and Lydia Branlund of Hawaii; sister and brother-in-law Rikki and Duane Dirstine of Las Vegas; nephew Mark Dirstine of Montana and niece Lezley Ericksen of California; and nieces Lisa Ricketts, Gwen Leonard and Karen Hackett, all of California, the daughters of Nancy’s deceased brother, Ed Ricketts Jr.
In lieu of flowers, Nancy suggested donations to St. Peter’s, the Sitka Fine Arts Camp, or the Sitka Sound Science Center.
Among Nancy’s papers, her daughter found this “Letter to Friends and Family.”
“It’s difficult to write a ‘last letter’ BEFORE you reach the end, but who knows when that will be? However, some beliefs, feelings and thoughts remain about the same through the years.
“I find that my feelings of LOVE keep growing all the time, to the point where LOVE becomes the main thing in my life. Understanding comes perhaps next, but I find there are many things I don’t understand but I can still accept them.”

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