Nancy Livingston Died Getting A Milk Shake For A Friend

Andy Meacham: ST. PETERSBURG — Nancy Livingston grew up with a mother who administered scheduled daily paddlings, threatened to send her to an orphanage and dismissed her straight-A report cards as insignificant.

Early adulthood wasn't much better. Two husbands had died by the time she was 32, the second by suicide.

After two relatively peaceful decades, during which she worked as a psychiatric nurse at Bay Pines VA Medical Center, the traumas returned. Breast cancer struck in her 60s, resulting in mastectomies. A third husband died. She suffered lymphoma.

Ms. Livingston not only survived those calamities, she helped others overcome theirs.