Naomi Harris Nordhielm

Naomi Harris was born in a tiny house on West North Street in Galesburg, Illinois on May 29, 1925. Sixteen years later she was, according to a completely unbiased witness, "the prettiest girl on the floor" at a YMCA dance. She married that unbiased witness just before he traveled across the Pacific to fight in a war. She stayed married to Berndt Nordhielm through the two-year war separation, four children, seven grandchildren, five great grandchildren, and moves from Illinois to North Carolina, Ohio, Massachusetts, and, finally, Georgia, where she spent the last forty years of her life. She was a woman who took shorthand,typed on a manual typewriter, and refused to use a computer to keep the family books..She was a woman who twirled a baton and rode horses, and who could play golf and bridge with the best of them. She was a woman people loved to be around because she was just so much fun. She was a woman whose Methodist roots ran deep and whose word was as good gold. She was a woman who sang: for her home town on a local radio station with knees knocking, for church choirs, and for her family, accompanying herself on the piano. She outlived an older sister and a younger brother, but not her beloved husband. After seventy years of marriage he is not such an unbiased witness anymore. But he still thinks she's the prettiest girl on the floor.

A Service celebrating her life will take place at Sharp Memorial United Methodist Church in Young Harris on Thursday, May 8 at 2:00 p.m. In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure breast cancer foundation (http://www.komen.org)