OBITUARY Alumna Dies After Months in Coma By Amanda McGrath Hoya Staff Writer

Former Georgetown employee and student Nancy “Nicki” Dean (GRD ’97) succumbed to her injuries and died Sunday, Feb. 17 in L’hopital Beaujon in Clichy, France after nearly three months in a coma.

Former Georgetown employee and student Nancy “Nicki” Dean (GRD ’97) succumbed to her injuries and died Sunday, Feb. 17 in L’hopital Beaujon in Clichy, France after nearly three months in a coma.

Dean, her husband, Georgetown government professor Joseph S. Lepgold and their 11-year-old son, Jordan, were staying on the fifth floor of the Hotel L’Academie when an electrical fire broke out on the third floor Sunday, Nov. 25. The family suffered severe smoke inhalation. Jordan died the following day. Lepgold, 47, died a week later, on Dec. 4. Dean, who worked for 10 years in the Office of the University Registrar and earned her master’s degree in Public Policy from Georgetown, was 51 years old.

After working at Georgetown, Nicki became an analyst of Social Security disability policy. Her supervisor, Assistant Commissioner for Social Security Policy Mark Nadel, said in a December interview that in her two years, she had already established herself as an integral part of the office community. “She is an outstanding analyst, one of those people who becomes the glue of an organization,” he said. “She is immensely popular and respected for her work,” he said.

Memorial services for Dean will be held in Madison, Wisc., according to Executive Assistant in the Office of the Provost Laurea DiJoseph. A university service of remembrance and reflection for the Lepgold-Dean family was held Jan.18. At the service, family, friends and co-workers of Dean described a woman devoted to her husband and son. Colleagues said Dean was a dependable co-worker who made the office feel like a family.

Dean also had two children from a previous marriage. Her son Christofer lives in Wisconsin and her daughter, Megan, had recently made Dean a grandmother with the birth of twins shortly before the fire.

According to University Registrar John Q. Pierce, who has been in regular contact with the Lepgold family and who worked with Dean, the family felt that Dean’s passing, though not unexpected “marked a second wave of grief.” He said Lepgold’s mother, “thought of [Nicki] as her own daughter, not as a daughter-in-law. They were very close.”

“What a great person she was.  It’s not many staff people around here who earn the broad respect and liking and gratitude that Nicki did.  I’ll miss her.  I’ve been missing her,” associate professor in the cDonough School of Business Elaine Romanelli said.