Joseph Gates Nason
Born: Fri Jun 27, 1919
Died: Fri Oct 12, 2012
Funeral Mass
10:30 AM Tue Oct 16, 2012
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WESTBOROUGH-Joseph Gates Nason died October 12, 2012 at UMass Hospital at the age of 93. In a sense this was the second time Nason had died since he was declared “presumed dead” by the U.S. Navy when his dive-bomber was shot down by anti-aircraft fire over a Japanese airstrip on Bougainville in 1943. Nason avoided capture for a week, but was eventually caught and imprisoned for two years in Rabaul, New Britain. There were over sixty allied prisoners, mostly American airmen, and only seven survived the horrible conditions. In 1987 Joe wrote and published a book “Horio, You next Die!” a memoir of his life as a POW.
Nason was born in Worcester Memorial Hospital and reared in Westborough where his parents Lucy and Noah, were lifelong residents. Joe attended Westborough School graduated from Pawling School, Pawling NY and Worcester Academy in 1938. He matriculated at Dartmouth College receiving his BA degree. After WWII Joe graduated from Loyola University’s School of Law (LA, CA). He became a member of the California, Massachusetts and Maine bars.
He worked as a corporate lawyer at State Mutual Life Assurance Co from 1950-1982. He retired with the title of Vice President and Assistant Secretary his work involved private placements. Among the best known of his loans were: Russell Stover Candies, Rival Mfg Co., McDonald’s and even Playboy
In addition, he was associated with the Westborough Savings Bank from 1950 to the present day he retired in 1994 as Chairman of the Board of Trustees and since has enjoyed the status of Trustee Emeritus.
Joe and his wife, Mary, volunteered for the Peace Corps in 1977 and were assigned to Saipan. Mary worked as a nurse and Joe in a number of legal offices for the government. They returned to the states in December of 1978 when Mary became ill.
Nason was a 40 year member of the Association of Life Insurance Counsel and served on the Westborough Finance Committee, the Veterans’ Housing Committee, the Board of Trustees of the Library and on the School Sites and Facilities Committee of which he was the Chairman. The later committee was instrumental in acquiring the Aaronson property, now the site of the Westborough High School.
Joe and Mary had summer residence on the Maine coast at Round Pond. Joe was a lifelong sportsman and played basketball, football and baseball in school and tennis, golf, sailing, skiing, hunting and fishing. He was a dedicated jogger for over 40 years.
Joe was married for over fifty years to Mary (Ostendorf) Nason who predeceased him in 2001. He leaves a sister, Phyllis Gelb of CA, and two children: Kathleen Rastad of AL and Steven Nason of UT. Two grandchildren: Michael Rastad and Jason Rastad, four great-grandchildren Jessica, Thomas, Alec, and Alissa; nephews and nieces.
His funeral Mass will be celebrated on Tuesday, October 16, at 10:30 A.M. in St. Luke the Evangelist Church, 70 West Main St., Westborough. Burial, with military honors, will follow in Pine Grove Cemetery. There are no calling hours.
In lieu of flowers, donations in his memory may be made to St. Luke the Evangelist Church Memorial Fund, 70 West Main St., Westborough, MA 01581
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Edward J. (
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Posted Sun October 14, 2012
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Joe was very special to me. He gave me my first job out of law school. He taught me so very much about the work I was going to practice for the next 37 years. More importantly, Joe gave me the example of being a good person to all. I saw first hand how he adored Mary. She was his guiding light. He was like an older brother, and I loved him dearly and will miss him greatly.
Ted Crane, Hollis, NH
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Douglass Teschner
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Posted Sun October 14, 2012
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I snet this to the local newspapers when I heard fo Joe's passing:
Learning of the passing of life-long Westboro resident Joe Nason, at age 93, brings back a flood of deep and special memories. In the mid-1950s, when my family moved to Westboro (at the very end of the then new O’Neil Drive), the Nasons were among the first families we befriended. When my father died in a 1964 car accident, everyone in town rallied around us, none more so than Joe and Mary Nason.
Joe Nason was one of the most positive people I have eve met. He barely survived a Japanese POW camp after his plane was shot down in World War II, but he was never bitter. Joe and Mary even went back to the Pacific as Peace Corps Volunteers.
Many memories of Joe run deep, but none more so than in 1970 when several of us Westboro HS grads, then in college, returned to town to organize meetings expressing our opposition to the Vietnam War. I vividly remember a well-attended session in the basement of the Congo Church (whose chancel bears a plaque in memory of my father). We took some pretty heavy audience flack about our views.
Near the end of that tough evening, Joe stood up and calmly, but forcefully, told the crowd that people thought John Adam sand the other Founding Fathers were traitors, but history has proven that they were patriots. Joe said we students were patriots, too. I have never forgotten his support, and, just the memory of that evening 42 years ago, invokes a flood of appreciative tears.
I graduated from UMass the next year and went to Morocco in the Peace Corps. Soon after, my mother left Westboro and moved to Maine. In the intervening years, I have only come back to Westboro occasionally, for events like the funeral of our dear next-door neighbor Dr. Earl Reiman.
My most recent visit was in January 2011 when my brothers David, Jim and I buried our mother next to father at the Pine Gove Cemetery. Of course, Joe was there to support us, like he always was.
After high school, I was eager to leave Westboro, but, over the years, I have come to appreciate it in a much deeper way, especially how the community wrapped our family in its arms after my father died so tragically.
I own a home in New Hampshire, where my wife and I raised two sons, but we now live overseas where I am the country director for Peace Corps in Ukraine. Being so far way when you get the news of loss makes one even more thoughtful and appreciative.
Thanks, Joe -- and thanks Westboro, too.
Sincerely,
Douglass P. Teschner (Jr.)
Kiev, Ukraine dteschnerrwanda@yahoo.com
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James Teschner
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Posted Tue October 16, 2012
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Dear Kathy, Steven, Michael and Jason, and the next generation,
It has been such a long time since we all have seen each other but I wanted to express my deepest sadness about Joe. Yes, he was 93, and what a life but it's hard to say goodbye nevertheless. He was such a dear and special friend to our family and to me. I truly cannot imagine our lives without having Joe as a constant friend and presence. As you may have remembered, our father was killed in a car accident in 1964 and Joe was one of the pillars of support for our mother and we 3 kids during that terrible ordeal. In the years that followed, he continued to take us skiing or to the Nason family cabin way up in Baxter State Park or just be with us in Westborough and in Maine when he and Mary were there. I remember well Joe defending my brother Doug's opposition to the Vietnam War (which he mentions in his own testimony). Unfortunately, he was one of the few supporters, in fact, possibly the only supporter, of pulling out of Vietnam in that generation of people that we knew. He was a lone voice in that church besides Doug and I remember being so moved by his individualism and willingness to stand up for causes that were unpopular. For me, he always represented a much more enlightened approach to life with values that went deeper and to places that were not commonly found. On a more personal level, Joe was one of the few men who actually reached into that space left by my father's death. He was always interested in what I was doing and what I had to say. I value that he laughed at my sense of humor and that he delighted in my presence. When I was an art student at the Rhode Island School of Design, he wanted to buy one of my art works though by that point, I had departed from the more "favored" Andrew Wyeth style paintings of my adolescence. I had just the lithograph for him, an "abstract" work that I was quite pleased with but he kindly declined as it reminded him too much of his days in the Japanese prisoner of war camp. But what was so touching was his desire to own something of the new work that was looking forward. I mattered to Joe, and that was very, very special to a young boy who had lost his father and to the adult I had become. I have many memories of Joe, but the ones that I will hold most dearly are those of his coming to our house and sitting in one of my mother's armchairs, with a drink in his hand. I can hear his voice and above all his laugh, that always came from some special inner world of Joe that found delight and amusement in our presence and in Life itself. He was a special man indeed. It's clearly an end of an era, one that I deeply cherish.
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