Elizabeth Thomas Nichols

Elizabeth Duckett Thomas Bunce Nichols died the morning of January 25 at The Oaks on Sweeten Creek, where she had lived since 2018.

Elizabeth was born in Catonsville, MD on June 30, 1930, the daughter of John B. Thomas and Agnese J. Duckett. She graduated from St. Mary’s Female Seminary & Western Maryland College in Westminster, MD. She retired after thirty-five years of teaching religious education in United Methodist and Episcopal Churches in Maryland, Nashville, TN, and Birmingham, AL. She also served twenty years as a mentor and trainer for Education for Ministry through the Theological Seminary at the University of the South in Sewanee, TN. Elizabeth spent her entire life as a student of theology and was very proud of her work with Sewanee.

In 1950 Elizabeth married Rev. N. Ellsworth Bunce, Jr. of Baltimore, MD, with whom she had two children, Deborah and Newton. In 1977, she remarried, wedding Sidney R. Nichols of Nashville, TN. They retired to Roanoke, VA. She moved to Asheville, NC in 2010.

Elizabeth was preceded in death by her parents and husbands, and her sister, Janet Pugh, and brother, William Wootton, as well as step-daughter, Penny Hruska, and son-in-law, John Schillo.

She is survived by her daughter, Deborah Schillo of Asheville, and son, Newton Bunce III of Prescott, AZ; step-children Ronald Nichols of Beech Mountain, NC and David Nichols of Arlington, TX, with their spouses and grand-children and great grand-children.