Pianist Nancy Fox, tap dancer in wheelchair show Fox viewers how music cheers elderly

Nancy Fox

Fox News Channel 2 has spotlighted Nancy Fox, heroine of the new VitalityPress book, “Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner’s breast cancer.”

The heart-warming segment was televised Christmas Day at 5 p.m., then repeated at 6.

If you missed it, you can catch it on the KTVU Channel 2 website.

Just click here, then click on the video (and wait a second or three for it to load).

Enjoy!

Nancy was paired with Maree Gilmore, whom she first encountered a few months ago during a piano gig at the rehab facility where Maree lives.

When the 83-year-old (who’s confined for the most part to a wheelchair) spontaneously started tap dancing to Nancy’s rhythms, presto, an instant friendship was magically born.

The duo then taped, on Nancy’s 75th birthday, an inspiring three-minute video with the theme “Disibilities Don’t Limit.” That effort is available on YouTube.

A short time later, Sharon Navratil, a producer for the San Francisco Bay Area’s Fox affiliate, KTVU, saw a reference to the video in a life-affirming letter Nancy had written to the Marin Independent Journal.

She was so moved she soon brought a camerawoman-editor, Anne Onate, to Kindred Nursing and Traditional Care center in Greenbrae to film the pair for the Fox audience.

Maree Gilmore

Nancy’s brilliantly been stroking the eighty-eights there and at countless other senior facilities for years, despite being hard of hearing.

The two-person crew carefully spent almost two hours taping the duo for a segment that lasts only minutes.

Nancy, who’s now in her 20th year of being cancer-free, likes to quote from her letter to sum up her feelings about the video and the newscast: “I hope our duet will inspire people with disabilities to continue doing what they love.”

She also enjoys repeating what she said in “Rollercoaster,” the book I, Woody Weingarten, authored: “I can be happy and healthy…As a card-carrying member of the Cancer Club, a card-carrying member of the human race, I want joy in the years [ahead].”

Nancy’s friends emailed and called to offer congratulations — from as far away as Hawaii, where a happy couple streamed the telecast as it was happening — after the newscasts aired.

Those appreciations returned to my foxy Fox wife some of the cheer and joy she’s brought others — cheer and joy that could be witnessed in her segment with Maree on Fox.

The whole enchilada could be called a study in inspiration, perfect for the holiday season, or, for that matter, any time.