Terence K. Nester (1949-2018)

8/15/2018

ERIE — Terence K. Nester, a dedicated bowler who was pleased to help the sport by pitching in to lead a league or serve on a local or national board, died Friday in his Erie home. He was 69.

He had bladder cancer, his wife, Sharon Nester, said.

Mr. Nester continued to serve as a director of the Elks National Bowling Association. He was on the board when the association held its 2017 national bowling tournament at Southwyck Lanes, in which 130 teams from the eastern half of the nation took part. He also traveled to cities that sought to play host to the national event. 

He was a former vice president of the Toledo Bowling Association and had been delegate to the American Bowling Congress national convention.

“He was highly thought of,” said Dennis LaBrecque, who met him more than 25 years ago through bowling.

Mr. Nester also bowled annually, through 2016, in the national tournament put on by ABC and its successor, United States Bowling Congress.

He liked to organize, his wife said, and when a league needed a president or secretary or treasurer, he stepped up.

“More people got to know him, and more people would ask him to step into positions,” his wife said. “He was bowling all over. He got to know a lot of people.”

He and younger brother Mike bowled since their childhood days at West Toledo Recreation on Phillips Avenue. When his brother was 18, Mr. Nester invited him to join a third-shift league, with an 11 p.m. start, at Timbers in Maumee.

“He always had a great attitude,” his brother said. “This is the kind of guy you want to run your league. He took care of business. Everybody appreciated him for what he did and looked up to him for that.”

Mr. Nester was trustees chairman of the Elks Club Toledo-Sylvania Lodge and was a former esteemed loyal knight and an esteemed lecturing knight. 

“He first joined the Elks because somebody needed him on a team,” his wife said. “He wasn’t just one to sit back. He got involved.”

He was born Feb. 9, 1949, in Toledo, Phyllis and George Nester’s third child. He was a 1967 graduate of Macomber Vocational High School, where he learned the printing trade. He went to work at a corrugated box division of Owens-Illinois Inc. He made rubber dies used on printing presses. He later worked in the office at O-I, and then at another company that did printing on boxes, as a sales and service representative. He retired in 2015.

Mr. Nester, with a deep knowledge of popular music from the 1950s through the 1980s, often acted as a DJ for parties and events. He liked to sing, and on Christmas Eve performed “O Holy Night” for his family, as he had annually for his grandmother when he was growing up.

Surviving are his wife, the former Sharon Bonneau, whom he married Oct. 24, 1969; sons Kenneth and John Nester; daughter, Jennifer Jacobs; brothers Gary, Lawrence, and Michael Nester; sisters Judith Kranz, Mary Casteel, Catherine Oehlers, and Ann Bolla, and four grandchildren.

Visitation will be from 2 to 8 p.m. Thursday at Michael W. Pawlak Funeral Home, Temperance, with an Elks service at 6 p.m. and a prayer service at 7 p.m.  Funeral services will be at 11 a.m. Friday at St. Joseph Church, Erie, where the body will be after 10 a.m. Mr. Nester was a member of the parish. 

The family suggests tributes to St. Joseph School, Erie. 

Contact Mark Zaborney at mzaborney@theblade.com or 419-724-6182.