Nancy Kenaston

During World War II, Shields was a member of the Auxiliary Territorial Service, trained to identify German aircraft; she operated an anti-aircraft battery on the Thames for three years.^[2] She also worked as a reporter for the Bath Chronicle newspaper, and was a British civilian volunteer with the United States Air Force (USAF) after 1941.^[3] She was assigned by the USAF as a court reporter at the Nuremberg trials.^[1] "When I arrived there for the trials, I saw streets filled with piles of debris three stories high," Kenaston recalled later.^[4]

After the war, Kenaston was managing editor at a small local newspaper in Fort Walton Beach, Florida.^[5] She was also director of public relations for the Okaloosa County School Board,^[6][7] a boating safety instructor with the US Coast Guard, and legislative aide to state representative Jerry Melvin. She was president of the Panhandle Animal Welfare Society and a member of the Okaloosa County Planning Commission. She was inducted into the Okaloosa County Women's Hall of Fame in 1999.^[8]

Kenaston wrote two local histories,^[8] From Cabin to Campus: A History of the Okaloosa County School System (1977) and The Rich Heritage of Fort Walton Beach and the Communities of the Emerald Coast (1999).^[9] In 2009, she wrote a memoir, When Fate Steps In.^[10] She spoke to community groups about her memories of World War II and its aftermath. "I feel very deeply that it is important to remember what happened there," she explained.^[4]

Nancy Shields married USAF colonel Hampton Ray Kenaston Jr., a widower with three children, in 1946. They lived in Florida. She was widowed when Kenaston died in 1969, and she died at Fort Walton Beach, in 2012, aged 92 years.^[1]