Nancy Gilmore Parks

Nancy Gilmore Parks passed away peacefully at her home in Southold surrounded by family on Monday, Dec. 29, 2025, just eight days after celebrating her 86th birthday. 

Born on Dec. 21, 1939, in St. Paul, Minn., to Gordon Leonard Gilmore and Ethel Mae Severson Gilmore, Nancy and her family moved to Baldwin, N.Y., in 1948 when her father joined the executive ranks of Trans World Airlines. A 1957 graduate of St. Mary’s Episcopal Day School in Garden City, N.Y., Nancy received a B.A. in English from Goucher College in 1961.

On Aug. 5 of that same year, she married her lifelong love, Arthur A. Parks, and began teaching at The Roland Park Country School in Baltimore, and later at the National Cathedral School in Washington, D.C. Nancy and her husband then moved to New York City, where she worked as a children’s book editor at Cowles Communications before moving to Kansas City, Mo. It was there that Nancy started her lifelong career as an award-winning journalist, advertising copywriter, broadcast producer, playwright, poet and storyteller.

As creative director and co-founding partner of Parks/Parks & Company, a Kansas City advertising, promotion and public relations agency, Nancy and the firm received scores of awards and accolades for effective marketing communications campaigns for local, regional and national businesses and not-for-profit organizations. She was a facile and creative writer across a broad spectrum of platforms including serving as a Midwest stringer for the New York Times.

Nancy then left the agency to work at the Kansas City Community Foundation, where she established a communications department and developed and managed Youth Friends, the foundation’s initiative to mentor school-aged children. Later in life, Nancy enjoyed writing plays and poetry, and collaborating on children’s stories with her grandson.

Friends and family will remember Nancy as a modest, gentle and creative spirit with an inquiring mind, more interested in others than herself and a smile that famously attracted friends like bees to pollen.

Nancy is survived by her husband of 64 years, Arthur A. Parks of Southold; daughter Robin Parks Lockwood (Mark) and grandson Crosby Parks Lockwood of Cutchogue; twin brother Richard Gilmore of Sacramento, Calif.; nieces and nephews Amy Gilmore (Chris) of Sacramento, John Gilmore of Seattle, Wash., Kathy Kozinski (Steve) of Jupiter, Fla., Carrie Gilmore Cash of Hopetown, Abaco, Bahamas, Betsy Gilmore Brock (Joseph) of Hyde Park, Vt., Molly Gilmore Butt (Richard) of Southfield, Mass., Sarah Gilmore DeRuiter of Muskegon, Mich., and Donald Gilmore (Gwenn) of Haymarket, Va., and their families. She was predeceased by her parents, Gordon Leonard and Ethel Mae Severson Gilmore, and brothers Robert (Ruth) Gilmore and James M. Gilmore (Sally).

A memorial service for Nancy will be held at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, 768 Main St., Greenport, on Saturday, Jan. 24, at 10 a.m. Virtual attendance will be available. A Celebration of Life will be held in Kansas City on April 25, 2026, with details to be announced.

The family requests that in lieu of flowers, contributions be made to The HealthWell Foundation, East End Hospice, NPR, PBS, your local public broadcasting affiliate or your charity of choice.

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