Nancy Carroll Coleman Mace, 79, died on September 24, 2026 at the Mercy Hospice House in Durango, Colorado after a year long courageous battle with pancreatic cancer. She was born on December 09, 1946 in Sherman, Texas, where her father was a professor at Austin College. She was the fourth of five siblings born to George C. and Melvina M. Coleman.

In 1955 her family moved to Baltimore, Maryland, where her father had taken a teaching position with now Towson University. She was a communicant of Govans Presbyterian Church where she developed her love of music, playing the piano and singing, and where she later married Thomas John Mace in 1969. She attended Baltimore City schools, graduating from Eastern High School in 1964.

She earned her A.A. degree in 1966 from Warren Wilson College, a small two year liberal arts college near Asheville, North Carolina. She then attended Towson University, earning her B.A. in 1968 and her Masters in Music Education in 1974.

In 1968 she began her music teaching career at Loch Raven Junior High School in Baltimore County, Maryland. She taught music and choral arts in many public and private elementary, middle, and high schools throughout the Baltimore area. The highlight of her educational career was being chosen from music teachers in over one hundred elementary schools to direct the All Baltimore County Elementary Chorus in her final year of teaching. She retired in 2002.

Throughout her career she also found time to give private piano lessons, to develop and implement therapeutic music services in a number of retirement communities and nursing homes, and to sing with the Baltimore Symphony Chorus. She continued those activities after moving to Salisbury, Maryland in 2003, singing with the Salisbury University Chorus, and after moving to Durango, Colorado in 2018, singing with the Durango Choral Society.

She was preceded in death by her parents George and Melvina, and by one sister, Judith Coleman Copeland. She is survived by her husband of 57 years, Thomas, and by their only child, John Coleman Mace, his wife Heather Elizabeth Mace, and their two children, her granddaughters, Olive Kathryn Mace, 7, and Josie Rose Mace, 4. She is also survived by her brother, Charles Coleman, and two sisters, Helen Coleman of Durango, and Vina Coleman Hughes and her husband Thomas, and by many nieces and nephews.

There will be a celebration of Nancy's life in Durango on Saturday, October 24 from 4:00 to 7:00 at Ska Brewing Company in Bodo Park, and interment in Christ Episcopal Church Cemetery in Cambridge, Maryland in November. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made in memory of Nancy to the Durango Choral Society, Music in the Mountains, Adaptive Sports Association, or the La Plata County Humane Society.