NANCY COONS McBAIN/MICHELSON
3/14/1951 – 1/10/2025
Vivacious, highly-intelligent and multi-talented, Nancy was born in Pomona, California, to Dale and Priscilla (Newschwander) Coons. The youngest of three daughters, Nancy found that public school came easy to her. She skipped a grade in elementary school and participated in cheerleading and student government in middle school and high school while maintaining a high grade point average. While her curricular activities and some studying kept her busy, she was also an active participant in her church youth groups and served as a pianist for the church’s worship services.
During high school, her family hosted one foreign exchange student for each of the final three years of high school, Edei from Denmark, Disa from Iceland and Christina from Peru. These experiences certainly expanded her world view and as a result, Nancy did a lot of travelling with her family and friends throughout her life. Nancy’s two sisters and her three foreign exchange “sisters” stayed in contact throughout her life and occasionally travelled together. Her last trip was a Mediterranean cruise to Greece with all her sisters and her daughter, Meagan, in October 2024, just two months before her death.
After high school, Nancy delayed post high school education to raise the loves of her life, her two birth children, Darin and Meagan, and her stepdaughter Holly. Her marriage to Loren McBain, an American Baptist Minister, took her to several interesting and challenging places as the wife of a minister, including Arizona, Hawaii, and California. She was also a highly successful church choir director, pianist and accompanist during this time.
When her children were older but still living at home, Nancy completed her college degree program and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree, as well as a Master of Arts degree. She became a highly respected and beloved high school teacher, teaching English at Flowing Wells High School in Tucson, Arizona, and teaching English and Math at Beckman High School in Tustin, California. Every year on her birthday at Beckman H.S., Nancy would wear a red boa with red elbow-length gloves and outrageous oversized sunglasses to teach. Whether or not you ever took a class with her, you knew of her great reputation and respected her because she was known throughout the school for her love of her subject and her devotion to her students.
While going through a difficult divorce after 45 years of marriage, Nancy continued to teach at Beckman High School. During this time, she received a surprise contact on Facebook from Dr. Steve Michelson, a close friend of both her and her husband Loren while living in the Bay Area of California. Nancy was the accompanist for Steve’s high school choirs from 1978-1980. She also sang in and was the accompanist for his church choir, which happened to be the same church where Loren served as pastor! In 2017, Steve happened to be looking up friends from the past and Nancy was on his list. He found her on Facebook and sent her a message just to say hi and to catch up on her life, since they hadn’t communicated for 40 years!
As she was going through her divorce at that time, she didn’t send a response to him for four months. Once they reconnected, they continued to communicate for a year and a half via email, text messages and phone calls, Steve in Montana and Nancy in southern California. During this time of communication and reacquaintance, they enjoyed watching the fabulous series Breaking Bad while in two different locations, but at the same time over the phone, on separate televisions with one muted and the other turned up loud! When they decided to marry, which was not an easy decision, Steve was living on a farm he had purchased when he retired from teaching. The five-acre farm had no animals or birds, but by the time Steve contacted Nancy, his farm had 10 chickens, 12 ducks, 11 geese, three guineas, two cats, two dogs, five goats and two horses!
The decision to move to Montana was very difficult for Nancy because of the challenges she faced, being a born-and-raised Californian with no rural living experience, in addition to being far removed from her family, so her decision to move to Montana was huge! Once in Montana, she found that she loved the beauty, the wide-open spaces, the majestic mountains and the clear skies that were often filled with thousands of stars that she was never able to see in California because of all the lights. She even developed a love for the farm and often helped with the farm chores, which included driving a John Deere riding lawnmower, cleaning duck ponds, cleaning chicken coops (ugh!), feeding the animals and birds, and brushing the horses, which she particularly enjoyed.
Three years prior to her passing, she and Steve accepted the position as Music Directors for the Plymouth Congregational Church, under the direction of Rev. Charles Wei. They thoroughly enjoyed planning the weekly worship service music and working with Charles. They even played four-hand piano pieces for some services, which they loved doing together. Nancy also did the service Power Point each week, and always created appropriate, tasteful and beautiful pictures to go with each aspect of the service.
When Nancy arrived in Montana, just recently retired, she needed something to occupy her time, so she took up crafting as an avocation and hobby and became very skilled at painting Barn Quilts, making dish cozies, blankets, small pillows, Covid 19 masks (big sellers!) and other merchandise that she sold at Farmers Markets and antique stores around the state. She really had fun using her creative talent in various ways through these activities until she became ill in 2022.
One of Nancy’s many interests and talents was her ability to use a table saw. She was so excited about building “stuff” for their farm that Steve encouraged her to buy the best tool available—a DeWalt table saw. Then she went to the Pinterest website and got blueprints for projects that interested her and that she thought would enhance our farm property value. She would look at them and then say, “We can do that!”
She and Steve made a great team, building a Gazebo with a very stylish roof, a teeter-totter, a T-frame for two swings, a property-dividing fence that is perfectly built with the same space between boards, and a hammock frame. Nancy, being the math wizard, would figure out all the angles and the proper levels, she would saw most of the wood, and then she and Steve would put everything together. Nancy absolutely loved using the tools! The 4’ x 10’ posts were surprisingly tough to lift, even with both of them doing the lifting. Nancy said that her interest in tools and carpentry was because of her dad because she always hung around him when he was doing carpentry work or repairing something. This combined effort on the part of Nancy and Steve really drew them together and strengthened their already healthy relationship; they never had an argument during these building projects.
Nancy loved to travel, and Steve strongly encouraged her to do that whenever the opportunity presented itself, although Steve usually stayed at home to tend to the farm since it was very difficult to find someone to take care of the farm for them. She especially enjoyed visiting Darin and his wife Danielle and their beloved twins in California, and Meagan, her husband Sean and their children in Oregon. She took many trips to see her family and friends, as well as a cruise with Steve and friends Ken and Donna Davenport. One of her special trips was to Nashville for a few days to visit two of her “cancer buddies,” friends of hers who had also been diagnosed with cancer and were undergoing treatment. That was a very therapeutic and memorable trip for her.
Nancy enjoyed shopping with friends and finding “great deals.” After shopping, she would occasionally stop for a Margarita or two. Whenever she wore a particularly attractive and expensive-looking outfit, she loved asking Steve how much he thought she had paid for it. When he would smile and say, “Maybe $40.00 or so,” already knowing what her response would be, she would grin and answer, “It was only three dollars!” She also loved playing card games with Linda and Chuck Chapman, or anyone who was willing to join in; she was not a gracious loser, however!
In 2022, after a six-week coughing spell, Nancy was air-lifted to a hospital in Missoula where she underwent radical surgery to remove fluid from around her heart. It was following this surgery that she was informed she had Stage IV Ovarian cancer. As devastating as this news was for both Nancy and Steve, she maintained an incredibly positive attitude. In October 2022, Nancy and Steve made the decision for Nancy to undergo radical surgery at M.D. Anderson Hospital in Houston, Texas. That experience turned out to be very positive and uplifting because of the highly-skilled medical team and a world-class hospital. At that point, both Nancy and Steve were optimistic about a positive outcome for her.
Following that surgery, she underwent an 18-week regimen of chemotherapy and radiation. For a time, every indication was that the therapy was effective in reducing, even stopping, the spread of the disease, and lowering her cancer rating. In December 2024, she took a turn for the worse, had difficulty breathing, and was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit of St. Peter’s Health in Helena on Saturday, Dec. 4. She was in the ICU for four days and then was moved to a more comfortable room to accommodate her many visitors. Nancy passed away two days later, on Friday, Dec. 10, 2025. She was never able to return home after being admitted to the hospital on Dec. 4th.
The passing of Nancy so suddenly was devastating to Steve, her family and her friends. She will be deeply missed by everyone. Her family and friends will certainly miss her beautiful voice and her piano playing, which was extraordinary and quite amazing because she had the unique ability to play by ear with no printed music as a guide; she could play any song suggested to her without having music to follow. We will miss her tremendous sense of humor, her infectious laugh, her sincerity, her love and her friendship. She was a friend to everyone she met wherever she went. She would strike up conversations with complete strangers, sometimes to the embarrassment of her husband. She did, indeed, have a positive impact on Steve, however, because, although he is extremely introverted, he is now more outgoing and conversational because of her example. Nancy was a special and unique person who will continue to live on in the hearts and minds of everyone who knew her.
A short time after Nancy died, a special dinner was organized by her son and daughter and their families in southern California; it was attended by close family and friends from Arizona, Oregon and California. A portion of her ashes was spread in the Pacific Ocean at Newport Beach, a short block from the house she inherited from her parents, and where she spent many hours with family and friends. It was undoubtedly one of her favorite places to hang out.
A memorial service to which everyone is invited will be held at Plymouth Congregational Church on Saturday, June 28th, at 1:00 pm, and will be officiated by Rev. Wei. There will be lots of music and time allowed for people to speak about Nancy, perhaps telling a story about her or what she meant to them. Anyone wishing to speak will be able to do so from where they’re sitting. A private celebration of Nancy’s life in the form of a potluck picnic will be held later in the afternoon at their farm, at which time a beautiful maple tree will be planted in her name.
Nancy is survived by her second husband, Steve Michelson, his son Josh and Josh’s son Tyvan, his son Luke, wife Meg, and their nine-month old daughter Mia; sisters Barbara (Jeff), and Kathy (Ed) and their children; stepdaughter Holly and grandson Chad; son Darin (Danielle), and grandchildren Austin, Logan, and twins Bodie and Kenley; and daughter Meagan (Sean), and grandsons Kaelum and Kase, as well as numerous nieces and nephews.
Add your thoughts and memories.