Nancy Freer Sherwin, age 73, passed away unexpectedly of a stroke on August 7, 2023
while being treated for newly returned cancer at St. Mary’s Hospital in St. Louis,
Missouri.

A celebration of her life will be held on Sunday, June 2, 2024 at 1:00 PM Central at Oak
Knoll Park in Clayton, Missouri. Attendees are encouraged to bring their own folding
and/or lawn chairs if possible. In place of flowers or other standard funeral gestures,
please consider donating to any society or hospital concerned with cancer research.

Nancy is survived by her son Andrew, her brother Bart, her sister Martha (Marty), and
her nephews Nick and Chad.

Nancy was born on February 12, 1950 to Herbert Freer and Mary Freer née Johnson in
St. Louis, Missouri. Growing up, Nancy possessed a natural proclivity for the arts,
particularly music and dance. Around age 2, she began dancing at Lalla Bauman’s
dance studio, which famously housed a “steep and very narrow stairway” leading “to the
voice like a metronome.” To further entrench the Chorus Line allusion, “it wasn’t
paradise, but it was home.”

At age 6, Nancy’s father took her to see a production of the musical “Peter Pan” at the
world-famous St. Louis Municipal Theatre Association (“The Muny”) and on that fateful
night, she fell instantly in love with musical theatre, Peter Pan, and The Muny. She
asked her father eagerly how she could “do that.” He explained that she needed to
audition, which she did the next year. In 1957, she was one of only a handful of local
children cast as Munchkins in The Muny’s production of “The Wizard of Oz.” In that
production, Margaret Hamilton, who portrayed the Wicked Witch of the West in the 1939
MGM film, reprised her famous role and, according to Nancy, was incredibly kind,
making an active effort to connect with each of the children and ensure that they were
not frightened of her when she was in costume and make-up. This brush with a big
name in show business would be the first of many for Nancy.

For the next few summers, Nancy auditioned for and was cast in Muny shows and had
the time of her life. She continued to study dance and became a proficient pianist, and
in the meantime also found great passion in girl scouting. In 1965, she attended the
penultimate nation-wide Girl Scout Roundup event, held in at the Farragut Wildlife Area
in Idaho, and made many lifelong friendships. She also attended Meadow Mountain
Ranch in Allenspark, Colorado for a few summers: first as a girl scout and then a
decade later as a counselor.
Ever a lover of the outdoors, Nancy also spent many family trips at Trout Lodge, where
her family and the Sherwin family would spend many vacations together, with the pairs
of parents – Herbert and Mary Freer and Charles and Ruth Sherwin – having bonded
over the two women’s friendship forged as sorority sisters at Harris Teachers College.

In high school, in addition to performing in school shows, she fell in love with writing and
journalism, writing for the school paper and even publishing various articles for the
Spotlight on Youth section of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat.

Nancy graduated Southwest High School in 1967. She attended Drury College (now
Drury University) in Springfield, Missouri and graduated in 1971 with a Bachelor of Arts
in English and made a lifelong friend, Chuck Walker, who would go on to help her
decide the name of her son, as would her future sister-in-law Amanda Sherwin. Later,
she attended Saint Louis University for a Master’s degree in Speech & Theatre
education; there, she made many lifelong friends and great memories.
Nancy became certified in teaching various subjects and taught at various schools
throughout St. Louis: Rose Fanning School, Monroe School, McKinley High School,
Busch School, Kennard School, O’Fallon Technical High School, and eventually,
Oakville Senior High School, where she made many memorable friendships with her
fellow teachers and her students and even had the privilege of teaching a young man
who would go on to become a famous name on Broadway today: Jason Danieley.

Through her adult years, Nancy became involved with a local singing group known as
Cosmos, worked various summers at a camp dedicated to the care of children with
diabetes, and performed as part of the local singing ensemble in various Muny
productions thanks to her connection with the Muny’s production stage manager John
Peters, who also happened to be her father’s best friend and her godfather, known
affectionately to the family as simply “Pete.” In addition to this, Nancy kept her finger on
the pulse of theatre with annual summer trips to New York City, where she would stay
with friends Dennis Skerik and Norb Joerder, both of whom went on to enjoy successful
careers in musical theatre.

Nancy was married briefly to a SLU classmate, David Dickey, and would later go on to
marry childhood friend Paul Sherwin, son of Charles and Ruth Sherwin. Together,
Nancy and Paul had a son, Andrew Jason, born in 1989. While she had originally
considered returning to teaching, Nancy found that she had a new passion:
motherhood, and so she became a stay-at-home mom, and an incredibly loving and
nurturing one at that.
In 1993, Nancy, Paul, and Andrew moved to a small town just outside of Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania for a job opportunity for Paul. Despite the distance from St. Louis, Nancy
maintained a connection with The Muny, and after a summer of working in the
production office, she was asked to serve as a youth chorus coordinator (known then as
a “kiddie wrangler”) for productions at the theatre each summer, since The Muny had
shifted in 1993 to casting large ensembles of kids and/or teenagers in their shows and
needed someone to help coordinate the crowd. Nancy, ever the eternal educator, used
the opportunity to coach and teach her young charges what it meant to be a theatre
professional. She collaborated and spoke frequently with directors, choreographers,
stage managers, and actors to gain further insights into the business to pass on to the
would-be Broadway stars.

In 1998, she and Paul split, formally divorcing in 2001. She and Andrew moved back to
St. Louis. From 1999 onward, Nancy became increasingly involved at The Muny,
gradually molding a full-blown youth education program which she was eventually
promoted to direct full-time in 2012. She organized workshops for the kids and teens to
help expand their theatrical training and to further expose them to the knowledge and
expertise of the many professionals hired to work on shows at the theatre. As the 2010s
progressed, Nancy expanded the youth education program to spearhead additional
outreach programs throughout St. Louis County and the city proper, including the
annual St. Louis High School Musical Theatre Awards and “Make-a-Musical,” a
charitable program designed to kickstart theatre programs for lower-budget and
underserved local schools.

In 2020, Nancy retired from The Muny under duress caused by artistic management. In
retirement, she capitalized on the time to pursue passions both old and new, including
deeper genealogical research, reading, language and grammar, history, film and
television, and geography, with one of her notable triumphs being the ability to name
any capital city of any recognized sovereign nation in the contemporary world off the top
of her head.

Nancy was a truly remarkable woman: intelligent, hilarious, and honest. She, like her
son Andrew, never met a stranger, making friends anywhere and everywhere and
putting in great efforts to maintain her relationship with them. Her mantra “Be noticed for
the right reasons” was one she instilled in hundreds of students and one that she
embodied every day of her life. That combined with her embodiment of the famous
quote from Les Misérables (her favorite musical), “To love another person is to see the
face of God” made her a woman who touched and bettered the lives of many.

On occasion, she would lament to Andrew that she had not had more children: this was
not a comment on him (for she cherished him above all else and considered him to be
her greatest pride and joy), but rather, it was a wish for a bigger family. His response
was to remind her that she had the next best thing: she, like the famous film teacher Mr.
Chips, “had many children,” a thought that brought her great joy and satisfaction in her
professional and personal life. She accomplished many remarkable things in her life, but
her magnum opus was the collective group of people whose lives she changed for the
better and for good.