Nancy M. Timinskas, 66, died peacefully August 19, in her hometown. Beloved wife of the late William A. Timinskas, her best friend, she was born in Bristol, Conn., July 15, 1940.
She is survived by her father, David Fortin of Woodstock, Vt., and her mother Inez Totman of Waterford, Conn., and three sons, David McDonald, Tim McDonald and Alex Timinskas of Old Saybrook. She left three grandchildren, Alexander, Andrew and Makayla, her sisters, Marsha Gesick of Old Saybrook and Holly Martin of Woodstock, Vt., and a large group of friends in the antique community.
Nancy’s antiques career started in Madison, Conn., at early school age. On a trash pickup Tuesday her mother sent her off in her pretty dress with hair ribbons and polished patent leather shoes. Unbeknownst to Mom, Nancy rummaged through the junk piles on the way to school and came home dirty, bedraggled and proudly biting a corncob pipe.
Her antiques career continued throughout her life and was closely shared with her father who also reveled in her finds. Nancy knew when something was old, good, what had been done to it and what to do to it to make it good again. She had that great eye, knew when to take a chance, make mistakes like the rest of us and still persisted.
Her sons laugh about “musical furniture.” That new furniture find would inspire her to rearrange the house, changing the den when her sons left for school to the dining room when they came home. She’d flip a good thing quickly and revel in its ascension to the top, uncaring about how much money each owner made along the way.
Nancy owned Weatherbee Hill Antiques in Old Saybrook; she worked and had a booth at Essex-Saybrook Antiques Center. She was a mainstay at estate sales on the Connecticut Shoreline managed by River Wind Antiques, The Source Antiques, Stepping Stones Antiques and Overflow Antiques for many years. She would work start to finish, digging the dirt in the beginning, finding the treasures, cleaning them up and selling them all.
Nancy would enter a house to work on an estate sale and before getting to work on the stuff in the house, she would dissect the building, figuring out when it was built and what incarnations took place in its lifetime.
Nancy’s love of antiques equaled her love of gardening, decorating, politics, her dog Buster, cats, Eve and Sassy, and her family and friends.
She was a friend of Bill W., maintaining sobriety for over 30 years. She was a fighter for her children and through her years fighting cancer, she was very brave and very courageous. Her journey was a life lesson.
We’ll remember Nancy as caring, kind, classy, fair, feverish, funny, tenacious, quick witted, wise, vulnerable, encyclopedic and mostly very strong and very brave.
She was our mentor in business and life and left a hole in the antiques community that cannot be filled.
—Peggy Maraschiello
