The Morning Blend
Welcome
Complete Media Kit
Nancy DuPre Menke was born July 11, 1936, in Palatka, Fla. The only daughter of James Haley DuPre and Mamie King DuPre, Nancy grew up in Starke, Fla., where her father was a Florida Power and Light substation manager.
She attended Bradford County High School and she received a bachelor of arts degree in education from the University of Florida. In 1959, she married Byron Gene McIntyre, a University of Florida graduate and OCS candidate. His first assignment was on Kodiak Island, Alaska, where her first son, Eric was born in 1960. In 1962, her second son, Kevin (aka Kipp), was born in Key West, Fla., and her youngest son, Scott was born in Jacksonville, Fla., in 1963. Nancy became involved with the Jacksonville Art Museum as well as the Garden Clubs in both Jacksonville and Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. The family moved to Ponte Vedra Beach in 1970. Nancy was also a founding member of the Our Lady Star of the Sea Catholic Church in Ponte Vedra. She was a passionate potter, an avid sailboat racer and beachcomber. In 1983, Nancy moved to Washington, D.C., and began working as a docent in the Insect Zoo for the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.
 Nancy DuPre Menke |
In 1994, Nancy and Arnold took a vacation in the Southwestern U.S. and ended up buying a house in the little town of Bisbee, Ariz. This speeded up Arnold’s retirement plans and they moved to Bisbee in September 1996 and have lived there ever since. Nancy returned to her love of pottery taking a course every year at Cochise College. She turned out some amazing things over the years, and a favorite pastime was making wall plaques devoted to a particular person. Each plaque depicted favorite activities of the person featured. Nancy was an excellent insect collector, and she and Arnold spent a week each summer in the White Mountains of California surveying for Arnold’s wasps in the high elevations there (10,000 to 12,700 feet). Nancy and Arnold also spent many days collecting at various localities in Southeastern Arizona. She got lost in Sycamore Canyon on one of these forays, and search and rescue was called in but fortunately she found their car just about the time the rescuers arrived. Nancy became a docent in the library of the Bisbee Mining and Historical Museum, a job she enjoyed very much because she liked to help people. Eventually this led to curating the large collection of oral history tapes and cleaning up the sound tracks on her computer and recording them on CDs. Nancy became involved with the Mountain Ranch Estates home owners association, eventually becoming president. Her biggest contribution was pushing for paving of the dirt roads in the area. That apparently will occur this summer and unfortunately Nancy will not see the fruits of her labors.
Nancy and Arnold began traveling around the world in the 2000s. In 2002, they went to Russia to take a river boat cruise from Moscow to St. Petersburg and eventually to Tallinn, Estonia, birthplace of Arnold’s father. The next Christmas Nancy surprised Arnold with cruise to Antarctica.
Seeing penguins up close, icebergs and the awesome landscape was a fantastic experience. Nancy made many new friends on that trip. Next was a cruise in 2004 across the Atlantic to the Cape Verde Islands, the Canary Islands, Morocco, Spain, Monico, Italy, Malta, the Greek island of Santorini and ultimately Athens. Later that year Nancy and Arnold went to Peru to visit Machu Picchu, and Ecuador for a cruise around the Galapago’s Islands.
Nancy had a close encounter with a male sea lion during a swim at one of the islands. Nancy’s last trip was to southern Africa, where she and Arnold stayed at safari camps in Kruger National Park in South Africa, in Botswana, the Caprivi Strip of Namibia, and a Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe.
In early 2006, Nancy was diagnosed with lung cancer, and she had never smoked.
This was a big blow. She had lung surgery and chemotherapy, but the cancer returned in late 2006. Nevertheless, Nancy and Arnold drove to Washington, D.C., to attend a memorial service for a close friend, Elaine Hodges. This gave Nancy an opportunity to see many old friends at the Smithsonian. Upon their return to Bisbee, they flew to Key West for one last visit to one of the Menke’s favorite vacation spots. This time they found the endemic pygmy deer that had eluded them so many times. Nancy’s last trip was to Davis, Calif., in early May 2007, where Arnold attended a 50 year reunion of former entomology department people. The long drive tired her, but Nancy enjoyed seeing some of her friends.
Nancy suffered a collapsed left lung on May 29 after surgery to install a port for chemotherapy. She was flown by helicopter from Bisbee to Tucson Medical Center, where she put up a good fight, but the pain from cancer became too much for her to bear and she just wanted to let go. She passed away Tuesday, June 12, 2007, after one day in hospice care. Attending her were sons Eric, Kipp and Scott; granddaughter Haley; and husband Arnold.
Nancy is survived by her husband, Arnold; her sons, Eric, Kipp and Scott McIntyre; her grandchildren, Haley and Drew McIntyre; and stepson, Kurt Menke. Nancy was a very caring and unselfish person, loved by many, and she will be greatly missed. Her ashes will be scattered at some of Nancy’s favorite wild places.
A celebration of Nancy’s life is planned for sometime in the fall in Bisbee. Arnold has a paper in press in which he is naming a new species of wasp after Nancy. She collected the type specimen. The name is Ammophila nancy Menke.
Those wishing to honor Nancy with a donation to the American Cancer Society are invited to do so.
Sérvio Amarante wrote on Jul 6, 2007 12:13 PM: