Funeral Service for Nancy Lewis Moore will be at 2:00 p.m. on Monday, January 19, 2026 at St. Phillip’s Episcopal Church. Interment will follow the service at Sulphur Springs City Cemetery. Visitation will be one hour prior to the service at 1:00 p.m. Nancy passed away on January 13, 2026 in Tyler, Texas.
Long after she’d been widowed at age 38 and left to single-parent her 11- and 8-year-old sons, Nancy Rose Lewis Barton Moore recalled that her main goal had been for the neighbors to never have cause to say, “Shut the curtains — here come the Barton boys!” She succeeded at that (as far as we know), and so much more.
Nancy died in Tyler, Texas, on January 13, 2026, after a short illness. Her life began nearly 85 years earlier in Hackensack, New Jersey. Along the way she accumulated a sprawling family, many friends, fluency in French and Spanish, various cats and dogs who knew a top-notch owner when they lucked into one, a cadre of former students who appreciated her even though she never showed movies in class, and irrationally strong feelings about the quality of the daily solutions to Wordle (e.g. oomph; “Not a ‘good’ word. But I guessed it anyway.”). She lived most of her life — nearly 58 years of it! — in Sulphur Springs, Texas, a fact which surely would have surprised her in 1967, the year before she took up residence there. So, how did she get from the Mid-Atlantic to the dairy capital of the Lone Star State, and what kept her in
place once she arrived?
The first part of the answer is “family.” The daughter of Ernie and Marie Lewis, Nancy was already attending Ursinus College north of Philadelphia when her parents and younger siblings relocated to Orange, Texas, at the behest of her father’s employer, the chemical company DuPont. Nancy chose to join them in Texas, where she completed her college education and met University of Houston optometry student Mike Barton. Nancy and Mike married in 1965 and moved to Lubbock, Texas, where his parents Geraldine and Raymond — everyone called them Jerry and Whacker — lived. There, Mike began his
career as an optometrist, Nancy taught high school French, and in 1968 they welcomed their first son, Tim. Soon after, the three of them moved to Mike’s (and Jerry’s, and her parents’) hometown of Sulphur Springs so that Mike could open a practice of his own. She became a lifelong, dedicated member of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church.
In 1971, Nancy and Mike’s family was completed with the birth of their second son, Chris, a gifted writer. I mean, you should really read some of his work. A few years later, they moved into a newly built home on one of eight lots on Cedar Lane, just outside the city limits. The very first morning, Nancy discovered a mouse in the bathroom and implored Mike to do something about it. He put their cat, Phantom, in the bathroom, closed the door, and went back to bed. She loved telling that story.
Soon after, Mike was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease. When he died three years later, in 1979, Nancy faced a choice. By this time, her parents, brother, and sister had settled in Delaware, Massachusetts, and Illinois, respectively. Nancy and her sons would have found a supportive community in any of those places. But they already had one, in Sulphur Springs. People who had known Mike Barton his whole life, or Jerry Barton her whole life, or Nancy Barton in the years since her arrival came through for her family in so many ways. They were never not watched out for. Because of Nancy’s friends — people who had gotten to know this smart, strong, capable, determined, huge-hearted woman and who loved her even though she never did use the phrase “fixing to” or accept that “tump” is a real verb — because of those friends, she and her boys stayed.
She stayed after Tim and Chris left for college and to live their lives elsewhere (allowing her kitchen doors, she happily remembered, to swing closed). And she stayed after she retired from teaching French and Spanish at Sulphur Springs High School. It’s a good thing she did stick around, too, because one of those friends that Nancy had attracted was about to step up in a pretty big way. Joe Moore, another Sulphur Springs native and a widower himself, asked Nancy out on a date and presumably kept his button-pushing tendencies in check until he had won her over. They married in 2004, at which point all bets were off, but all the button-pushing in the world could not keep her from loving him deeply for the nearly 22 years of their marriage. Nancy resumed cooking, and her complaints about that were hard to take all that seriously considering the innumerable great meals prepared by Joe that she got to enjoy. They loved to
travel together, be it to Italy, Silver Bay YMCA in New York State, or Fort Boggy State Park. In their evenings together, Nancy and Joe watched a lot of news (too much, some suggested), but at least it was of the actual, factual variety. And the two of them happily participated in the 2017 Women’s March and in the Hands Off and No Kings protests in 2025. She would no doubt have gone to more rallies in 2026 and would be happy to know that you took part in her stead.
Nancy is survived by Joe; by son Tim and daughter-in-law Sidney Barton; by son Chris and daughter-in-law Jennifer Ziegler; by stepson Mark Moore and daughter-in-law Rhonda Moore; by stepsons Stephen Moore and Michael Moore; and by grandchildren, stepgrandchildren, and grandchildren-in-law Andrew and Maria Barton, Sage Barton, Natalie Barton, Fletcher Barton, Taylor and Andrew Burton, Ryan Moore, Andrew Moore (yes — Andrews Barton, Burton, and Moore, which delighted Nancy to mention), Mason Moore, Maddie Moore, Joseph Moore, Savanna Moore, Cassie Moore, Owen Ziegler, and Renee Ziegler, as well as great-grandchildren Emmalyn Gaddis, Luca Rivera, and Kendall Brown. She is also survived by brother Bob Lewis and sister-in-law Helen Lewis; sister Judy Bush and brother-in-law Charles Bush; brother- and sister-in-law Gerald and Charlotte Barton, and many cousins, nieces, and nephews. And even by an aunt, Ann Nolan! And by former daughter-in-law Casey Kelly-Barton, with whom she kept a warm correspondence. That was important to Nancy. That’s the kind of person she was.
In lieu of flowers and in addition to getting out there among fellow Americans and speaking up
for what’s right, Nancy would want you to donate blood and make a contribution to the Texas
Freedom to Read Project or The Nature Conservancy.
Finally, we would not do Nancy’s memory justice if we did not note the three pieces of advice
that she regularly offered to the Barton boys in their adolescence. The statute of limitations may
have expired on the first of these but the latter two remain as applicable as ever:
Keep your pants zipped, watch out for the dummies, and be a good citizen.
Arrangements are under the direction of West Oaks Funeral Home.
www.westoaksfuneralhome.com
