By Alan R. Prescott
March 7, 2022
In Memoriam of Nora Jean Raum 05/21/1950 – 02/02/2022
I remember Nora as a high school student when we met back in the fall of 1964. She was my high school sweetheart. We were inseparable. She would attend every varsity soccer game that I played in, no matter what the weather and temperature were that day. I can remember when she cooked me our first dinner together (aided in its preparation by her mother). When her puppy had little pups, a little white toy poodle, she allowed me to take one home.
Nora and I broke up 2 weeks before my Senior Prom in 1966. It was caused by her father, who was too busy to take the time to understand Nora and me. We were apart for 50 years before I found her living in a condemned house in Escondido, California. At that time, Nora was sick with CLL Leukemia and a host of other afflictions. She had had a massive heart attack in the widow-maker artery, a TIA, COPD, and a host of other life threatening concerns. However, despite everything and our time apart, we still were very much in love.
Nora was a fine arts certificate holder from Rhode Island School of Fine Arts in Providence, Rhode Island. She was an accomplished Chef with hands-on training under 5 French Chefs in New York City. She was a sculptor, a painter, a food critic in Georgetown, South Carolina, a food photographer, and a trained researcher and investigator.
Most of all, Nora was my lifetime love and then the person who enabled me to write in the Fernandina Observer after seeing a degrading article about the Fernandina Beach Municipal Golf Course, which was penned by the local mayor. On January 22, 2021, my first article appeared in the Observer which, if it wasn’t for Nora Jean Raum, would never have been written.
On February 2, 2022, Nora passed away from Covid after returning from her oncologist at Scripps Hospital for treatment for her CLL Leukemia, which had been in remission for the last 4+ years of her life. Nora had contracted Covid, probably on her flight back from San Diego, California. She was diagnosed on January 3, and I was diagnosed 2 days later on January 5. For the last 4 days of her life, I sat in a chair looking at her in a quarantined, closed room, watching her, unable to do more than text until the last 2 days, when she could no longer communicate thru speech. On Friday, February 4, 2022, I received a call in the morning from her doctor in the hospital to come to the hospital. He said that it was urgent as Nora wasn’t doing well. Shortly thereafter, when I was barely 3 miles towards the hospital where she lay in a palliative state, Nora passed away. It was 12:05 pm or thereabouts.
As I walked as fast as my aching legs would go toward the elevator to the ICU, my thoughts were racing. When I saw her laying there lifeless, my heart seemed to pause. I knew what I as well as many others had lost.
Thank you for listening. My articles about golf will return shortly.
Editor’s Note: We offer our condolences to Alan Prescott and the friends of Nora Jean Raum. Nora made a number of trips to Fernandina Beach and loved our island community. . As Alan Prescott mentioned in this article, Nora was the motivating factor that brought him to Fernandina to see the course’s conditions and to offer suggestions for improvement.