A good woman has left us. Nancy M. Sell, nee Neill,  passed away on January 9, 2021 from COVID-related complications, as well as Alzheimer’s and complications of old age.Her husband Leo L. Sell preceded her, passing in February 2013. She was born on December 28, 1933 to Clinton and Rachel (Teeter) Neill of Bankers Michigan (Hillsdale County), and outlived all four of her siblings Jack, Oneta, Clinton Jr, and Harry and but one of her generation of family (our love to Aunt Geri). She is also survived by her children Leo (Michigan), Leslie (Arizona), Alan (Michigan) and Steven (Florida), as well as five grandchildren and a great grandchild, and numerous nieces and nephews. Lastly, she is survived by her partner Don McGlynn who has been with her for a number of years and provided a great deal of care and companionship to Nancy as she became increasingly infirm. The family offers their thanks and great appreciation to him. 

The family expresses their deep appreciation to the caring staff of Spring Haven Retirement Community and the Spring Lake Rehabilitation Center. 

The immediate family will gather at a later time to have a private, veteran's burial ceremony for our father, Leo and his loving wife Nancy Sell.

Nancy was a good mom which, considering her childhood and formative years, is quite extraordinary. She grew up thrifty, but generally happy and of good humor. Positive and encouraging toward her children’s learning and talents, with her and Leo encouraging enjoyment and character-building, contrary to today’s more frenzied and achievement-oriented environment for children. We are all grateful for their support as we grew up and each followed our own paths in life. 

She was born not long after the Great Depression began. When we gathered some memories from her she told of how her folks Clinton and Rachel were often cold toward one another and her mother bitter and severe. She shared many times of how when she misbehaved her mother would “make me go out and cut my own switch”. She had other warmer memories of childhood, being doted on a bit as the baby of the family by her brothers and sister. The childhood home was next to the train tracks that ran through near the village. As a child she’d wave to the engineers and soon they were throwing the occasional rubber toy or small doll out the window into the yard for her as the train passed. She spoke fondly of “sitting on the space heater and reading”. Her father, Clinton Sr began to have some health issues while Nancy was a young student and the doctors advised that it would be best for him to go south for the winter. So for a number of years including freshman and sophomore high shool years Nancy spent winters and got her schooling in Florida. Perhaps that was the start of her travel interests!  

By age sixteen Nancy was inspired by her older sister Oneta (16 years her senior) who was working and independent. Nancy, thinking that was cool and wanted to imitate her sister, left home at about 14 years of age to begin to earn her own money and pay her own expenses (clothing and such) as she entered High School.  She commenced working for a well-to-do family who owned the local Null’s Dairy business (Audrey and Marguarite Paul; Audry was mayor of HIllsdale in the 1960s). She worked as a babysitter for their kids, and on weekends, helped in the dairy’s business office where she began to learn bookkeeping. 

Nancy also expressed a memory of running around in her teens with her niece, Joan and introducing a friend, Geraldine (Aunt Geri) to her brother Harry after his return from the Navy. Harry and Geri wed, making Nancy a bit of a matchmaker.

She also spoke of how in her teens she stayed with her older sister Oneta. The  two surviving Neill brothers owned the store next door to their mother’s house in the village of Bankers. Nancy worked for them part time. She was a bit “built” and remembers men coming to the gas pumps so she’d wash their windows. Such was the lot of a pretty girl working in such a place at such a time. 

On Memorial Day, May of 1953, mutual friends introduced Nancy to Leo Sell who was a recently returned soldier (Korea, honorable discharge January 1953). Leo always said “those green eyes got me!!” Nancy and Leo married in November 1953 and commenced a marriage that lasted over 59 years until Leo’s passing from Alzheimer’s in February of 2013.  Nancy and Leo loved to dance together and many of us recall how their eyes twinkled toward one another all through the years. He could still make her blush and giggle just a little bit even in his last year. 

After being married a short while, in 1957 Leo felt the pull of his farm family upbringing and they purchased 55 acres, house and barn, in Fayette Township, Hillsdale County where they raised a family until  moving in 1968. The farmhouse had been vacant and burdock plants were high and thick. One would imagine Nancy had doubts about what she’d gotten into with the hard work it took to get the yard cleared, house repaired and clean, and all that. 

Nancy and Leo traded the farm in on a new-built house and moved the family back to town to simplify from the complications of farm life on top of career demands. As life went on they moved to Pensacola FL (1979); Nalcrest FL (NALC-owned postal carriers retirement village) in 1988. And finally, Nancy moved to Lake Wales FL after being widowed. Since June of 2019 following hip replacement surgery she resided in the Spring Haven Retirement community (independent living) and most recently, after hospitalization, the Spring Lake Rehabilitation Center, both in Winter Haven, Florida.

In addition to raising and caring for a family, Nancy worked part to full time for most of her adult life, working at the Null’s Dairy while a teen, and then as an adult at the Hillsdale Phone Company as an operator where sister Oneta was working at the time. Later she worked at other Hillsdale businesses including Michigan Gas Utilities Co, and Watkins Oil, in Florida she worked for Wyndham while in Pensacola, and later in mid-Florida off and on at  Florida Natural / Citrus World (Orange Juice) well into her 70s. 

She loved to travel, visiting Hawaii (twice) and Las Vegas (many times), and regularly enjoying gaming in Biloxi Mississippi. 

She also loved to play cards, pop popcorn and eat it while reading a book (and sipping a bit o’whiskey), and visiting with friends and family. 

We all appreciated her rollicking sense of humor and general enjoyment of life.  We will miss her greatly.