A lifelong rebel turned to art in retirement

By Stephanie Hayes, Times staff writer
In print: Saturday, March 29, 2008

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ST. PETERSBURG — Hilde Nelson's father was a free-thinking agnostic. He wouldn't let his daughter attend church. So, when she was 4, she sneaked off to Sunday school.

Her third-grade teacher had a paddle, and once threatened to use it on her. So she grabbed the paddle, snapped it in half and stormed out of the classroom.

Her mother was staid, uptight and silently disapproving of her daughter's behavior. So, Mrs. Nelson rebelled more. In the 1920s, she bobbed her hair, danced wildly and lived as a flapper.

"She always, all of her life, stood up for herself and said, 'You can't tell me I can't do that,' " said her daughter, Linda Nelson, who still keeps one half of the paddle her mother broke.

• • •

Mrs. Nelson spent years working as a campus librarian at Bradley University in Illinois. She read books on art and anthropology. She had energetic discussions with students and teachers. She was attractive with skin that stayed porcelain all her life.

Naturally, gentlemen flocked to her. But her heart was taken.

She met a shy boy named Walter Nelson in kindergarten. He always pined for her, but she hated him. Eventually, she dated his brother. When that didn't work, she decided to give Mr. Nelson, who had sprouted to a hulking 6 feet 5, a chance. At 21, they married.

"I will have two children," she told her husband. "I will have a boy and I will have a girl."

That's exactly what she did.

"Again, this was a strong-willed lady," said her daughter, 67.

At age 65, Mrs. Nelson decided to become an artist. She began training under noted professionals, once traveling to Ireland to study. While painting by a lake, she fell in — but she kept her canvas dry.

She preferred watercolors, landscapes and portraits. She won her first blue ribbon for an oil painting of two pigs.

Painting was her release, her chance for quiet reflection. Sometimes, she needed to pull away.

She stopped painting in her last seven years of life, but her artwork adorned the halls of Lexington Terrace, the St. Petersburg assisted living home where she lived. When employees recently asked her to pose holding a paintbrush for a photo, she glowed.

"When she was holding that paintbrush, you could just see her eyes light right up," said John Donsang, administrator at Lexington Terrace. "She was in her glory."

• • •

Mrs. Nelson died of natural causes on March 22. She was 97.

She never stopped speaking her mind.

The day before she died, she felt a nurse was talking too loudly. So, she asked her to keep it down a little.

Stephanie Hayes can be reached at shayes@sptimes.com or

(727) 893-8857.