Nanette Robinson Weissinger | Passages

Nanette Robinson Weissinger died Friday, Dec. 11, at Islands Convalescent Center in Friday Harbor, after a short and unexpected hospitalization. She was 90. She had lived in Friday Harbor for the past 10 years.

She was born Nanette Pray Robinson in 1919 in Valcour, N.Y., the daughter of Harry and Lillian Robinson. Her father, a medical student in Burlington Vt., died in the Great Flu Epidemic of 1918, a few months before she was born.

She was schooled in a one-room school house in Peru, N.Y., then at Plattsburgh (N.Y.) High School, and attended St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., where she washed dishes for 25 cents an hour to support her studies.

In 1939, she married Robert J. Weissinger of Orlando, Fla. He was a master welder and steamfitter. They lived in Plattsburgh, N.Y., for most of their 30-year marriage. They raised three children: Roger, Julie and William. She was a fierce advocate for her children's higher education; all three hold advanced degrees.

Nanette received a bachelor's degree in psychology at State University of New York at Plattsburgh in 1969. She studied therapeutic massage and received a doctoral degree in naprapathic medicine from the Chicago National College of Naprapathy. From 1989 to 1999, she lived in Boston near the Common and attended classes at the Massachusetts College of Art. As an artist, she enjoyed considerable proficiency with oils and watercolors, as well as sculpture and pottery.

In 1999, she moved to Friday Harbor, Wash., where her son William practices law, and she became a regular at Mullis Community Senior Center lunches. She learned to use a computer and explored the Internet, reading the news in several languages. She had a life-long enthusiasm for the French language, the civil rights of minorities and the Metropolitan Opera, and became an admirer of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society of Friday Harbor and Congressman Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio.

She is survived by her son Roger Weissinger-Baylon and his wife, Anne, of Menlo Park, Calif. and Paris, France; her daughter Julie W. Jaffe and husband, Miles, of Chilmark, Mass., and Queenstown, New Zealand; and by her son William J. Weissinger and his wife, Rudi, of Friday Harbor, Wash.

She is survived also by three grandchildren, David Robinson Simon, Jeremy Max Simon and Caroline Weissinger-Baylon.

In lieu of flowers, donations in her name may be made to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society or to the political campaigns of Dennis Kucinich.

Her remains will be cremated.

— Family of Nanette Robinson Weissinger

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