On October 25, the Fishing Bay Yacht Club mourned the passing of Frances R. Fannie Taylor who served as Executive Secretary from 1969 until her retirement in 1996, a 28-year span. The hyper-organized Fannie was perfectly suited to her position, and her penchant for detail was legend. She rode herd on recalcitrant Board Members to dot every i and cross every t. Fannie had a memory like a steel trap and seemed to know more about the family histories of members than even the members themselves. She organized and maintained an extensive membership database without the benefit of todays computer technology. This is remarkable because, even two decades ago, the membership base was not significantly smaller than it is today. A manual typewriter was the only machine she used to generate all Club invoices, records, and reports. Receipts and disbursements she recorded by hand in a manual ledger.
Dilatory members who did not pay their annual dues in a timely fashion could expect dire consequences if they were on the receiving end of a telephone call from Fannie, often lambasting them to either pee or get off the pot! Few were ever delinquent again. There were not many aspects of Club life that she considered beyond her bailiwick. She once persuaded a member, seeking to enroll his yacht, that he had to change the name of his boat because another member had already claimed the identical name for his boat. Board members and members alike quickly learned that Fannie ruled the Club and that it was always prudent to heed her counsel.
In 1982 Fannie was elected an FBYC life member in appreciation for her exceptional service to the yacht club, and in 1990 awarded the prestigious Matthew Fontaine Maury Bowl for outstanding contribution to sailing. At her retirement in 1996, the Club gave her a framed FBYC burgee with a brass plaque engraved with names of all the Past Commodores under which she had served. She proudly displayed the framed burgee in her residence at the Chippendale Retirement Center, and her family displayed it at the funeral home after her death.
On Opening Day, April 19, 1997, she was present for the dedication of the new Jackson Creek clubhouse in her name. However, she thought the designation, The Frances R. Taylor House, much too formal and requested that it be simply called Fannies House - and the name stuck. FBYC remained an important part of her life until the end, and she endeavored to be kept informed about the many members she had befriended and the activities that the Club sponsored.
In her earlier life, Fannie graduated from Southern Seminary Junior College, a school founded by her grandfather. No longer in existence, Southern Seminary was located in the Blue Ridge town of Buena Vista, just east of Lexington. Subsequently, she matriculated at the Stuart Circle School of Nursing and the Richmond Professional Institute (RPI), now VCU. She was employed at Stuart Circle Hospital during World War II, following which she worked as a nurse for Dr. Anthony Kell for 40 years and as secretary of the James River Sertoma Club. She was an avid fisherman and passionate bridge player. Fannie usually missed the October Board meeting because she and three of her friends spent the month in Nags Head fishing and playing bridge. Bridge was a game in which she could engage her keen intellect, but Fannie lamented that she was unable to find anyone at her retirement home that knew how to play bridge.
Fannie was predeceased by her husband, H. D. Taylor, and is survived by her son, Scott Taylor, his wife Joann, and four grandchildren.
Requiescat in Pace