Nan Bourne
Hanover, NH – Nan Bourne (née Anne “Nancy” Greenough Bradley) passed
away by choice at Kendal on July 7, 2025, surrounded by family, and
supported by the Kendal community. Nan was born in Boston on Oct. 8,
1933, and raised in Milton, MA where she attended Milton Academy and,
later, the Woodstock Country School. At Radcliffe College (’55), Nan
met her husband of fifteen years, George Eman Vaillant (Harvard ’55,
MD ’59). Nan and George had four children, Ananda Forest (né George
Emery), John Holden, Henry Greenough, and Anne Liberty. In the
mid-sixties, while her older children were attending the school, Nan
co-founded the Shady Hill School Bazaar in Cambridge, and joined the
board of the League of Women voters. In 1970, she co-founded the
Boston chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW), which
grew quickly in to the Massachusetts Chapter. For two years she was
chapter vice president, working in the speaker’s bureau as a
spokesperson in charge of messaging and media interviews.
Nan was always a seeker; following her divorce in 1970, she lived
alone on Martha’s Vineyard where she became involved in women’s
groups, Transcendental Meditation, and other therapeutic endeavors
that reflected the counter-cultural trends of the time. In the 1980s,
she relocated to Santa Fe where she continued in a similar vein of
woman-centered community groups, therapy, and adult education. Her
association with the Renesan Institute for Lifelong Learning and the
Unitarian Church led her to develop and teach courses on film and
gender studies, give lectures, and organize speakers on a variety of
subjects ranging from gender politics to foreign affairs. A talented
facilitator, Nan moderated luncheon and dinner discussions for the
Santa Fe Council on International Relations, and ethics discussions
for a group of local high schools. Always an avid reader and
researcher, Nan delved deeply into the history of gender relations and
the psychological, political and cultural implications of matriarchal
and patriarchal systems, a line of inquiry that would become a
lifelong fascination. As she would write in a 2008 Renesan course
description, “[I am] primarily fascinated by the hidden history of
female power, how it was buried, and how it is re-emerging in new
forms.”
In 2010, Nan returned to New England, settling in Woodstock. She
remained socially and intellectually active and vivacious throughout
her life, drawing people to her wherever she went.
In addition to her four children, Nan leaves behind her beloved sister
and best friend, Emery Goff, and seven grandchildren to whom she was
devoted.