Helen "Cindy" Beardsley Nickelsen

Helen (Cindy) Beardsley Nickelsen passed away peacefully with family and caregivers at her side on February 4, 2025. She was born in Nyack, NY on August 6, 1926. She was the only child of Abby Juliette Beaty Beardsley and Walter Douglas Beardsley. She was preceded in death by her husband, Richard Peter Nickelsen. Theirs was a marriage of 64 years.

She attended schools in Upper Nyack and Nyack, New York for grades 1 – 12. She graduated from Connecticut College in 1948 with a major in history. She planned to follow a career in Social Group Work and spent two years in New London, Connecticut working at the YWCA. During her second year there, she became engaged to her future husband and they were married over Thanksgiving of 1950. Since he was a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University, she found short term jobs in Baltimore and Leesburg, Virginia. This enabled her to be with him as he pursued a Ph.D. in Geology. During his last two years of school she taught at Roland Park Country Day School in Baltimore. Upon his graduation her husband accepted a teaching position at Penn State University. After several years they both realized that a smaller undergraduate college and college town were more to their liking.

At the same time the opportunity to teach at another school only 60 miles away was offered to him. So they moved to Lewisburg where he happily taught at Bucknell for some 40 years. Since her husband always found jobs or research activities during the summer months and his sabbaticals, Cindy had to adapt to different situations. She and her children went to Wyoming with her husband and lived in a trailer on a ranch, for two summers. A completely different lifestyle. The family also moved to Norway for a year (15 months) where her husband worked on a major research project in the mountains. After the children were all in school in Lewisburg, Cindy prepared herself for teaching also.

She had spent the summer of 1950 at the University of Wisconsin, Madison taking courses in social group work, which she had planned to do before she became engaged. She often said that the social group work courses were very helpful in classroom management. The affiliation with Bucknell made it easier to pick up the credits she needed to qualify for teaching in the public schools. As luck would have it, a job opened up at the CSIU before she had quite finished qualifying for a Masters Degree. She took the job in the Act 89 program and spent eleven happy years teaching as a Reading and Math specialist in several non-public schools in the area. She particularly enjoyed her association with Maranatha Christian Day School. After her husband retired from Bucknell, their traveling in both the U.S. and abroad increased and ended only when he died.

Her principal community activity was always the League of Women Voters. {FROM LWV -- Cindy Nickelsen was a Lifetime member of the League of Women Voters of the Lewisburg Area for 61 years. In addition to attending meetings she served as a volunteer for the League's Finance Drive, distributed League publications such as the Voters Guide and Facts for Voters, as well as served on the Observer Corp by reporting on public meetings which would be of interest to League members.} She enjoyed the non-partisan aspect of the organization, focused on getting information to all voters. 

Cindy enjoyed gardening and many different crafts. She made her children’s Halloween costumes and made clothes for herself and her family, especially her girls. She went away to a camp where she learned leather working. From their year in Norway, she learned how to make Norwegian rugs and completed two. The second one was her own design, based on a picture of a rock taken by her husband. She also learned and enjoyed embroidery, knitting and crocheting. 

Cindy is survived by her three children – Abby of North Potomac, Maryland, Bruce (Maria Renee) and son Lucas of Upton, Massachusetts and Jill (Chuck) of Durango, Colorado, and many friends in Pennsylvania and around the U.S. 

Information on memorial services will be available at a future date.