Rest in Peace, great wife, daughter of Frankie Bryan Upham and Alvan Stowell, and survived by her husband of 53 years, Preston Westmoreland, and three children residing in Texas, Donald Kent Rodman, Wendy Sue Rodman and Steven Ross Rodman. Nancy was born October 9, 1935 in Des Moines, Iowa but the family moved early to Hollywood, California, and she saw herself as a Hollywood girl. Her parents, hoping for a career in show business, enrolled her into the Meglin Kiddies, the legendary child talent school where Shirley Temple and Judy Garland were discovered. At a casting call in Hollywood, where Nancy was being considered to play a young Hedy Lamarr in a movie, she decided she didn’t like the routine, and gave up those aspirations.
Nancy also did early modeling and photography at noted schools such as the Art Center in the Los Angeles area. Raised just off Hollywood Blvd, on Leland Way, in a home that Edgar Bergen always wanted to buy!
Nancy was married 3 times. One husband was a rocket scientist who helped design the Saturn V rocket engines that went to the moon, but she counts the best husband, number 3, that began with a phone call one day while working at a tax service in Thousand Oaks, California. Her boss wanted to request a song and asked her to call the local radio station and request the Theme from the movie, MASH. In that fateful call, the DJ answered the phone because the receptionist was out, and started a conversation. Several more days, and several more requests, finally led to a meeting with the KNJO Radio personality Preston Westmoreland. This led to a whirlwind romance with a Lake Tahoe marriage, and an astonishing life together for 53 years. After getting married, Preston was hired as a host for Dick Van Dyke’s Phoenix radio station, KXIV, she became a lead teller with the Arizona Bank, then later got into real estate and became a senior Escrow Officer and branch manager for First American Title, and then as a Realtor with Russ Lyon Sotheby’s International Realty.
After Preston was hired by KTAR and became one of the first talk show hosts on Phoenix radio, they moved to Carefree and purchased a home on Dream Street, where they remained. Nancy had always raised her family camping, and took it to the extreme, always working camping into everything the couple did. She learned how to fly, along with Preston, purchased an airplane they named “Christine” after the Stephen King book, and went airplane camping. When they had a boat, they went boat camping, with their four-wheel drive vehicles, they explored the desert, and even camped on islands in Lake Powell with a jet ski towing a cargo pod. Nancy learned how to snow ski and became an advanced rated scuba diver, exploring wrecks and coral reefs in the Caribbean, capped off with a spectacular dive down Belize’s Blue Hole.
She and her husband also produced a successful series of survival dvd’s called Stay Alive, featured on national media and by Paul Harvey. While in real estate, Nancy helped to negotiate some historic purchases, including the sale of the world-famous Boulder House in North Scottsdale. Later years involved traveling the country in their RV when they weren’t showing real estate.
