It has been so long since I wrote, that I have forgotten how to add a new entry into my blog. But now I'm back again....
These were words that my mother wrote a few days before she left us. She wanted you all to know that she was still fighting the good fight.
Here is the full obituary that the family wrote about her life. Her amazing presence is still here:
Loved by so many, Dr. Ann Weaver Nichols grew up in Los Angeles, CA. She went to John Marshall High School and thought she would be a secretary. A good guidance counselor saw her potential and encouraged her to apply to a scholarship for first generation students. She arrived on the Stanford Campus as the first in her family to attend college. She was active on campus with work study in the library and in the Freedom Summers traveling to register voters on spring breaks and summers. She established a program to enable students to spend Spring Break in service, which eventually became institutionalized at Stanford and exists to this day as the “Alternative Spring Break” program. She spent a semester in the Stanford Campus in France and was active in the student YWCA. While at Stanford, attending Friends Quaker Meeting, she met a young medical student and the love of her life, Andy, in 1964 and they were married after graduation in 1965. She and Andy joined the Peace Corps and spent two wonderful years in Peru where she taught community development. Ann went on to do a masters and Doctorate in social work from Colombia University.. She continued to be involved in the YWCA and served on the national board from 1969-82 and the World YWCA executive board in Geneva from 1975-83, culminating in hosting the World YWCA General Assembly in Phoenix in 1987. This power of community to transform informed all her work and she loved the global community of powerful women creating change.
Returning to Tucson in the fall of 1970, she joined the faculty of the ASU School of Social Work because there was no school of social work in Tucson. For years, with two small children in tow, she travelled up and down I-10 to teach classes in Tempe. Noticing that students were also commuting from Tucson to Tempe for classes, started in 1972, she offered a few courses in Tucson, carrying course materials in the back of her station wagon. A full degree program was launched in 1978 and she became the first director of the Arizona State University Social Work program, Tucson Component. She ran the program from 1978- 2008 and the thousands of students who studied with her know the power of her teaching – many programs in Southern Arizona were started as class assignments to identify community needs and respond, including the loved Information and Resource Center and the Coalition of Human Services. Her text book that she co-authored “Initiating Change in Organizations and Communities went through multiple printings. Annually, Ann would create an Alternative Budget, tracking all the bills in the legislature and then teach how the state legislature could be fully funding human services as part of a balanced budget. In 1996 and 2000, Ann worked tirelessly to help Arizonans get healthcare by supporting the Healthy Arizona Initiative - especially with cookies for the volunteers.
Sabbaticals were used to practice social work globally. Twice she worked in Uganda with the YWCA, developing a community-based organizing movement across the country. In 2008 she retired after 39 years at ASU, only to join the faculty at the Mindolo Ecumenical Foundation in Zambia teaching social work. For two years, she helped update the national curriculum and taught community change. Her Zambian students are still running new programs around Kitwe that they created as a part of her course.
On her return to the US, she developed a new passion through personal experience of grandparents raising grandchildren. She became the first chair of the Arizona Grandparent Ambassadors, an advocacy network for grandparents raising their grandchildren and other kinship network families. Among other more traditional efforts, every year the grandparents would write Valentines and take cookies to the legislature to help them remember the kin-care families. Seven years of lobbying paid off as finally, in 2022, the legislature changed state law to provide additional support.
Her academic research was broad but uniformly focused on the power of people to create change. She wrote about restorative justice, people making policy, and the role of forgiveness in public policy. She presented to NASW on working for change in tough times and resilience and survival skills for activists. Her final major research and writing was on the macro-concepts of forgiveness – how to help nations transform after traumatic conflicts with possible forgiveness structures and exercises for organizations, communities, and nations. She was awarded Social Worker of the Year by NASW and presented a lifetime achievement award by the ASU School of Social Work. She won the national Jefferson Award. Most recently, in November 2022, the she received the Advocacy Award from the Center for Economic Integrity in recognition of her work on kincare.
Her faith community has always been a source of strength and inspiration. She was the chair of the International Social Workers and Spirituality Network, hosting four conferences on social workers who integrated faith practices to meet community needs. She spent years struggling against the death penalty, was named Abolitionist of the Year by [ORG] and wrote cards and letters to every single person on Death Row in Arizona since the 1990s. She taught Alternatives to Violence courses in the federal prison and together with the American Friends Service Committee and now Just Communities. She worked with reintegration for people after time served as well as facilitating Outmates, a family support network to help families who were navigating the prison system. She was never hesitant to stand up for the goodness in people and the power of restorative justice. In Tucson, she helped to found Women Confronting Racism, a group that met monthly to address issues of racism in the Tucson community for over a decade and treasured those friends.
She and Andy were active members of First Christian Church, and members of FCC and other faith organizations remained her extended family for 50 years. Ann played many roles over the years, currently serving as the church moderator. She also loved her two other faith communities - First Congregational Church and the Community of Christ in the Desert. They gave her sustenance as she believed strongly in activism that comes out of deep faith. There was rarely a week without multiple worship experiences and in the last few years, she focused on writing beautiful liturgies.
Ann lost Andy in 2001, and became a widow at 59 with three biological children and five adopted children. This wide family knows “Nana” to be the true matriarch of unconditional love and support. Ann is survived by her brother Sam Weaver, and her children Cathy and Asher (El’ad, Noa and Matan); Michael and Carissa (Audrey); Miles and Alexa; Mardi and Paul (Odyssey, Johnathan, Joshua); Nassau and Scott (Johvan, Nick, Evan and Bradley); Johnnary (Johnnary); Mexi and Dan (Sydney, Jayline, Brendan, and Camilla); Haley and Manny (Johnnary and Penelope). She loved all her children and especially all of her grandchildren. Her last gift was a book of recipes this Christmas with her famous cookie recipes passed down so that traditions will continue.
If you would like to donate in her honor, she asked that gifts be given to JustCommunities, fostering new models for community safety outside the punishment system, or the Ann Nichols Scholarship Fund to help students committed to social change attend the School of Social Work. Memorial services will be held on Saturday, September 2, 2023 at the ASU School of Social Work340 N. Commerce Loop for mural painting and stories from 9:30 am - 11:30 am and then a Celebration of Life on Sunday, September 3, 2023 at 3 pm at First Christian Church, 740 E. Speedway Blvd., Tucson, Arizona - with a reception of homemade cookies to follow (and if you are inspired, bring some to share.)
Ann Nichols, Presente!
