Douglas (Doug) and Nancy Brockman 

Nancy and Doug Brockman, both from small Virginia towns met in 1971 and became interested in each other because of commonality of religious backgrounds and child rearing philosophies.  At the time, they both had two small children from previous marriages and readily admitted they needed help. When the children met, they liked each other and a few months later, Nancy and Doug married. They raised their “Brady Bunch” to successful adulthoods:  The Rev. Dr. Jeffrey Brockman, a clinical mental health therapist, Charlotte, NC; Laura B. Lovern, a staff accountant, Davidson, Doyle & Hylton, Lynchburg; John C. Coates IV, a law professor, Harvard Law, Cambridge, MA; and Anne Coates, Executive Director, Thomas Jefferson Soil & Water District, Charlottesville, Va.  They have five grandchildren.

Doug spent his formative years playing baseball, riding bicycles, delivering papers, and taking the bus from Amherst to Lynchburg on Saturdays to see cowboy movies and eat at the Texas Inn. Summers found him happily spending time with his Campbell grandparents and Uncle Buck.  His grandfather served as a spiritual and intellectual mentor, while his uncle offered a mischievous influence. Doug’s senses of responsibility, nurture, humor, and dry wit come directly from those two sources. His educational and vocational accomplishments are impressive.  From high school, he entered the College of William and Mary when 16 years old, left in 1957 with a BS degree in accounting and recognition from the Virginia Society of Public Accountants as the top accounting student at W & M.

Too young to sit for the CPA exam, Doug joined General Electric’s financial management training program and became a certified auditor for the company, traveling all over the United States and abroad.  After 11 years and living in upstate New York where he didn’t know he had a front sidewalk because of continual heavy snowfall, Doug decided to leave G. E. and move to Lynchburg to be nearer family and a warmer climate. He was hired by Sam Moore Furniture industries, Bedford, as their financial officer.  Promoted several times he eventually became a stockholder and the Executive Vice President.  After thirty-four years he retired in 2000.

Since then, he has played much tennis, spent quality time with grandchildren, served as a volunteer and board member with Daily Bread and delivered Meals on Wheels. He is also an active member of First Presbyterian Church, served as a trustee for many years, holding the position of president of the First Presbyterian Corporation, and still counts collection on a regular basis.  He is now learning pickleball, going to WC’s gym and finding seminars for his enlightenment.

Nancy grew up on a tobacco farm.  Not fond of working in the sticky tobacco harvest, she did it because it was expected, while much preferring time spent in school, spending hours curled up in a big chair at the local library reading and taking the train with her mother to Richmond to see relatives and visit museums, as well as trips to New York City and the Jersey shore. Playing in the woods, fishing, and following her father outdoors were equally important.

Following graduation from high school Nancy enrolled at Ferrum Junior College on a work scholarship, saying she hoped to never see a tobacco leaf or experience a lack of indoor plumbing again. She went home for the summer with her roommate from Lynchburg where she married, and over the course of a few years worked for a local CPA firm, several physicians, and Lynchburg National Bank, now Wells Fargo.  She managed a bank club for 21–35-year-olds, which required her to become a licensed life insurance agent, a personal banker, and a planner for group travel, social, and financial activities.

After her divorce from her first husband and marriage to Doug, whose wife had died at a young age, Nancy first concentrated on settling her new family.  That accomplished she returned to the workforce part-time until the children were teenagers when she went back to the bank full-time. There she developed a bank club for the 60+ market, again offering personal banking services, seminars, group travel and social activities.  She was promoted to Assistant Vice President and in 1988, the program was recognized as the best prototype of its kind in the country by “Wall Street Journal.” Locally, Nancy was given the Douglas Southall Freeman Award by local professional communicators.

After fifteen years at the bank, Nancy retired but did not stop working. She started an independent group tour business and became a professional speaker on the advantages of working with and selling to the growing mature market.  This work took her all over the United States including being the featured speaker on the topic of tourism at many governors’ conferences.

In 1988, First Colony Life in Lynchburg hired Nancy where she worked for 17 years in Marketing as Leader, Strategic Events, and Sales Incentive Programs. She developed such programs for independent brokerage insurance agents, took top producers from across the U.S. on reward trips to many exotic places such as Indonesia, Thailand, Nepal, India, Morocco, Turkey, Russia, and New Zealand. After she retired in 2003 from this facet of her career, she was surprised by a “Lifetime Achievement Award of Excellence” from the Insurance Brokerage General Agents industry while the group was in Cuzco, Peru, on a trip which she had arranged and promoted. Doug gladly joined Nancy on many of her work excursions.  They have also engaged in personal trips all over the world.

Nancy, like Doug, has been an active volunteer assisting at the City Schools, the Lynchburg Public Library, and the Community Market. She served as an officer on numerous boards too long to list.  Examples include the Lynchburg Jr. Woman’s Club, Friends of the Community Market, Jubilee Development Center, and Lynch’s Landing Downtown Mural Project. As a member of First Presbyterian Church, Nancy served as chair of various committees and as moderator of the Presbyterian Women.  In the past ten years, she held membership on the Trustee Board for Westminster Presbyterian Homes, Inc., a subcommittee of the Synod of the Mid-Atlantic as it related to Westminster Canterburys in Virginia, and on the Trustee Board of Westminster Canterbury Lynchburg ending eight years in Feb. 2021 after two years as chair.  She still enjoys Ragged Robin Garden Club’s activities and members, and now is delighted that living at WC-L gives her time to read, read, read! 

When you see Nancy and Doug give them a warm welcome and ask them to elaborate on any aspect of their biographies.  Their stories go way beyond these two pages.