Young Love

Nancy met Dick Meyer at Drury College in Springfield, Missouri. She had signed up to work on the production crew of a play that Dick was directing. He had already made quite a name for himself directing shows for the Springfield Little Theatre. They started going out and were married the September after they both graduated.

After they were married, they moved to Evanston, Illinois and lived in a basement apartment while Dick did graduate coursework at Northwestern. Nancy worked at G.E. Searle & Co., the pharmaceutical company that introduced The Pill. (Years later, chemists told Nancy it was her insistence that they work on something to cure cramps that led them in that direction.)

When Dick landed his first teaching job at Arkansas State, Nancy was pregnant with their first child. They drove from Evanston to Jonesboro in their 1936 Chevy, packed to the rafters, and had seven flats along the way. Nancy returned to Springfield as she approached term and stayed with her mother until Chris was several weeks old. During that time, Dick drove back to Springfield every weekend.