Priscilla Healey, champion on Canton golf course; at 86

PRISCILLA HEALEY

Trophy-winning Priscilla (Nagle) Healey never let advancing age keep her off the golf course or the badminton courts, where she won repeatedly until recently. Nor did it dim the competitive spirit that made her a legend at Wampatuck Country Club in Canton and the badminton courts of the Maugus Club in Wellesley.

To her, friends said, growing old was just another challenge.

A lifelong athlete and a member of Wampatuck since 1951, she played her final golf there last year. Seven weeks ago, she visited the course for the last time in failing health, said Arnold Eardley, the club's head golf pro, not playing but riding in a golf cart with her son, John of Canton.

"She was giving him advice on how to improve his game," said her daughter Christine, of Concord.

Mrs. Healey, who won the President's Cup in the women's division at Wampatuck three times, its Grandmother's Tournament four times, and played in badminton tournaments around the country, died of congestive heart failure July 17 at her Canton home. She was 86.

"Priscilla was an all-round athlete," said Wampatuck's manager, Stephen Eardley.

Until two years ago, Mrs. Healey played badminton at the Maugus Club, where she had been a member since 1970, said Keith Jennings of Natick, the club's steward. And she excelled in the club's candlepin bowling lanes, he said.

In 1994, she competed in a badminton tournament in Australia.

Both Jennings and Eardley remembered her as very competitive but loved by everyone, a woman who knew all the rules of her favorite sports and was always glad to mentor others in them.

As she aged, Jennings said, she told him: "It's not that I want to win. Just to get on the court is winning enough."

Swimming was another of her passions. A one-time Canton public school gym teacher and America Red Cross certified swim instructor, Mrs. Healey taught generations of schoolchildren to swim at Canton's Bolivar Pond and other swim sites during summer breaks, as well as in indoor pools.

She did it with skill and great patience, her family said. She could coax children fearful of putting their face in the water into swimming laps. She showed a young man paralyzed in a car accident how to move in the water, and she taught handicapped children how to swim.

While Mrs. Healey was paid for some work, her family said, she did much of it as a volunteer.

"Mother felt that the physical development of a child was as important as the intellectual," said her daughter Johanna of Canton.

Her daughter Christine said, "she took great joy in movement. It gave her an inner energy that animated her face."

In spite of all her achievements, her daughters said, Mrs. Healey remained "a very humble woman," who wanted to share her joy with others.

She was born in Brookline to John and Aline (Fraser) Nagle and graduated from Brookline High School in 1939. The school awarded her its Shick Cup, given each year to the female student "who combined excellence in both sports and academics," her family said.

She studied physical education at Boston-Bouve College and earned a bachelor's in science from Tufts University in 1943. For the next four years, she taught physical education in the Amherst schools. She met Paul Healey while taking courses at Boston College, where he was majoring in history and planning to teach. They were married in 1947, first living in Brookline and settling in Canton in 1951.

Starting a family, the Healeys realized a teacher's salary would not be sufficient, Johanna said, so her father took a job driving a truck for The Boston Globe from 1961 to 1990.

"We weren't rich in money, but rich in family," Johanna said.

She recalled one day that her father had to hitch a ride to work because Mrs. Healey had to use the family car.

"When the man who picked him up heard he had eight children, he suggested he take them to the woman who teaches them sports," she said. "It was, of course, my mother. It was a proud day for my dad."

The couple became members of Wampatuck Golf Club in 1951. After her husband died in 1994, the club named an annual tournament in his memory.

In 1982 Mrs. Healey retired from the Canton schools after about a dozen years and became a bookkeeper at the John Nagle Co. in Boston, founded by her grandfather in the 1800s.

In 1984, Mrs. Healey was named president of the Wampatuck Women's Division.

Other women golfers at Wampatuck saw her as a role model.

"Priscilla was a super, super woman," said Phyllis Tyrrell of Canton. "She was a legend with a wealth of information on golf rules and etiquette."

Mrs. Healey had been a member of the Women's Golf Association of Massachusetts until two years ago.

In recognition of their mother' s passion for sports, Johanna said, her family placed a golf ball and a badminton bird in her casket.

In addition to her two daughters and son, Mrs. Healey leaves four other daughters, Patricia of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Jill of Tigard, Ore., Paula of Clinton, Rebecca of Canton; another son, Vincent of Avondale, Ariz.; a brother, Russell J. Nagle of West Roxbury; 26 grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.

Services have been held.