Victoria Paige Gaspard will be honored with the Accomplishment award Tuesday, March 28, at the Sabine Hall of Fame banquet at the St. Joseph’s Catholic Hall in Zwolle. Doors will open at 6 p.m. and the program will start at 6:30 p.m. This award recognizes a young Sabine Parish citizen with accomplishments that deserve special recognition who is 25 years old or below.
Victoria was born April 3, 2006. Her art career started as soon as she could hold a pencil. Victoria began taking Talented Art classes with the Gifted and Talented school program since she attended Many Junior High School and Nancy Dockens Hurley wanted to do something special with her husband, Ace, for her 50th anniversary. Especially since he had reminded her of its importance. “He said, ‘you know this is the big one?’” she recalls. “He was always thoughtful about birthdays and gifts.”
While they’ve enjoyed more elaborate celebrations in the past, Nancy and Ace have an ailing family member to care for, so they’ve been celebrating their anniversaries from home in recent years. “We mostly do a lot of cooking at home, so we had a steak dinner for Valentine’s Day,” she says. “We can’t really go anyplace special on a trip.” In spite of the circumstances, she explains she wanted to do something special for their fiftieth anniversary, especially since the occasions are important t her husband. “He was always so attentive to our anniversary coming up.” She says. “I thought, well putting it in the paper, friends and family will see it.”
Nancy says she and Ace met through a mutual friend when she was a student at Northwestern State and his employer temporarily assigned him to Natchitoches from Sulphur Springs, Texas. “They transferred him to Natchitoches because they were having a rebuilding program, with the understanding they’d move him back whenever there was an opening,” she says. “We met, so he never went back... I finished school, and along the way we grew closer and he proposed.”
Several years into their marriage, Nancy had become a respected teacher, but Ace had grown frustrated with his job, so she offered him an idea. “I said, ‘well why don’t you go to school,” she recalls. “You can be a teacher; I can help you some with that.”
Soon, Ace had become an athletic coach, and it wasn’t long after that he and Nancy prepared to welcome a new member to their family. “He taught one year in Winnfield and that was the year our son was born,” she says. “The next year someone approached him seeing if he would be interested in doing adaptive PE.” Nancy says she’s glad her husband followed her into teaching. “He was an excellent teacher, and I was just real proud of his accomplishments,” she says. “I enjoyed my teaching career, so I think having our careers similar was a plus.”
While Ace and Nancy have enjoyed many years together since, she also reveals that her son’s birth occurred during one of the most challenging times they’ve experienced while married. “We had maybe three major crises in our marriage, and one of them was the birth of our son, because I was very sick,” she says. “We spent our seventh anniversary at Shumpert Hospital in Shreveport.” She recalls an act of kindness by a member of the hospital staff as they awaited their son’s birth. “There was a nun there, Sister Kathleen. She ordered a steak and wine dinner for us at the hospital,” she says. “That was the weekend before our son was born. He was there quite a while at Shumpert in the neo-natal unit.”
Nancy describes two other crises that she and her husband have weathered together more recently. One was the death of her father following a severe injury and the other was a health emergency in which her husband required surgery. Each time, they’ve withstood the tests together. Along with the support of friends and family, Nancy offers a simple answer to account for their strength: “Being a Christian, accepting Jesus as our savior and believing in God got us through those hard times, those crisis times,” she says.
Nancy says there have been many more good times than hard ones, and many more happy anniversaries than frightful ones. In fact, she has counted and commemorated most of them. “We usually exchange cards,” she says. “I probably have all fifty cards, well lacking one, that he’s given all through the years.” She suggests her husband has always committed their special occasions to memory. “In my wedding album, I have the program that the pastor printed out,” she says. “When I was looking through that, I noticed an envelope, and I opened it up, and it said on the front, ‘long stem, red rose and it was for our first month anniversary... he remembered that little anniversary. “ Nancy shares a further secret for others who desire an enduring marriage. “The success in our marriage is the communication. That’s very important,” she says. . “He’s a devoted man, a faithful man (and) wise. He thinks things through very carefully and gives good advice.”