Obituary: Nemec, Eleanor Downs (O’Neal) “Downie”
Age 78
23, 2015 at home with her loving husband at her side.
Downie was born in Tallassee, Alabama on March 25, 1937.
She loved growing up in Alabama with her sharp shooting brother Bill and experiencing all the adventures of rural life alongside the Coosa River, especially riding her own pony across the fields at age five.
Living with her family at Grandma Bates’ house, dipping cool water from the well near the front porch, and seeing many of her 31 cousins come to visit there were some of her favorite memories.
Moving to Lay Dam Village after Grandma’s house was the next adventure.
As she recalled in a recent Alabama Power Co. interview celebrating the 100th anniversary of Lay Dam, “it was paradise!”
- swimming in the mighty Coosa River on hot summer days, learning to water ski with her dad as he taught anyone willing to try, pretending to be Nioka, Queen of the Jungle, in the dense forests behind the village houses with her favorite cousins Barbara and Mary Lou.
While in college at the University of Alabama (Roll Tide!)
she majored in nursing and in her junior year was admitted to the Navy in the first class to be commissioned officers in the Naval Nursing Corps.
As a Lieutenant JG, she served in the Philippines at the hospital in Subic Bay and in Japan at the Yokosuka Naval Base.
After honorable discharge from the Navy, Downie worked at the VA Hospital in Seattle as the charge nurse for the first Coronary Care Unit (CCU) in Seattle where she met and married a medical student at the University of Washington in 1974.
She went on to teach nursing at the Intercollegiate College for Nursing in Spokane where her husband was in residency training at the time.
Then she retired from that position to start a family and was blessed with two sons, Stephen and Paul.
Downie was a devoted wife and mother, always putting her family ahead of herself, loving them without qualification, and setting a standard of honesty and integrity from which her family learned every day.
She is survived by her loving husband, Neil; their two sons and wives, Stephen and Bonte Nemec and Paul and McKinsey Nemec; brother and his wife, William “Bill” and Jo Ann O’Neal; nephew and wife Shannon and Neena O’Neal; niece and husband Sherri (O’Neal) and Brian Matson; first cousins Barbara (Greene) Petty and Mary Lou (Greene) Easterling, Jimmy and Karen Greene, Joyce Petty Rabe, Barbara Renfro, Nell Vines Walker; and numerous other relatives in Alabama and nearby states.
A visitation and celebration of Downie’s life will be held from 4 to 7 p.m. Friday, August 28, 2015 at Yates Funeral Home - Coeur d’ Alene Chapel, 744 N. 4th St., Coeur d’ Alene, ID 83814.
Services in Clanton, Alabama will be held on Thursday, September 3, 2015 with a visitation at 10 a.m. and a funeral service at 11 a.m. at Martin Funeral Home, 1300 4th Ave. North, Clanton, AL 35046.
A graveside service with military honors will be held at the Martin Memorial Cemetery in Clanton, Alabama following the funeral service.
Yates Funeral Home has been entrusted with the care of final arrangements.
Please visit Downie’s online memorial and sign her guestbook at www.yatesfuneralhomes.com.
YATES FUNERAL HOME, Coeur d’Alene, ID.