Nancy Joan Vukelich, age 76, passed away on October 10, 2012, in Albuquerque. A native of Pittsburgh, she moved to New Mexico in 2000. Nancy was a divorced and working mother who raised three sons. She was a woman pioneer in the travel industry who started as a sales and reservations agent in 1961 for KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, which then had an office in the lobby of the Carlton House Hotel in Downtown Pittsburgh. Nancy was the first female agent in the world hired by KLM, the world's oldest airline. She entered the industry at a time when an airline employee could travel the world on interline passes for free or at little cost. Nancy traveled to the Middle East, South America, Africa, the Caribbean, India, Asia and most of Europe. Two of her favorite places were Beirut, Lebanon, which, until civil war erupted in the 1970s, was known as the Paris of the Middle East, and Istanbul, Turkey. Starting in the early 1960s, Nancy periodically escorted tour groups for KLM and for Thomas Cook to Amsterdam, Paris and London, and she soon was promoted to a KLM sales/reservat- ions office in Downtown Chicago. She later worked for TWA and United Airlines in Pittsburgh and for a Pittsburgh travel agency, Wayne Travel, for which she booked travel and escorted tour groups. She worked for many years for American Express Travel, first running a corporate travel office in Gimbels Department Store in Downtown Pittsburgh and later an American Express retail travel office in Buffalo, NY. In the 1980s, Nancy moved to Miami Beach, FL, where she booked cruise and dive tours for Maduro Travel. Nancy briefly lived on the Dutch side of St. Maartens in the Caribbean. In the 1970s and 1980s, Nancy took more than 100 ocean cruises on most major cruise lines, although her favorite remained Cunard. Nancy especially disliked Italian cruise lines. Her favorite ships were the QE2 and Cunard Countess and Princess, some of whose crewmembers traveled to Pittsburgh to celebrate Eastern Orthodox Christmas in the home of her mother, who welcomed everyone. During the explosion of international travel at the dawn of the Jet Age, Nancy and her three young sons frequently hosted visitors from the Netherlands, Great Britain, France, Greece, Indonesia, Japan and Germany on the sofa of their modest apartment in suburban Baldwin, PA. In Albuquerque, Nancy worked as a telephone customer support rep for America Online, where she excelled because of her pleasant telephone personality. Nancy loved NBA basketball, horse racing and music. As an adult, she attended scores of Broadway musicals. Later in life, she became a passionate opera fan. An avid reader all her life, Nancy moved on to audio books after she lost her eyesight to macular degeneration. Nancy kept librarians at the New Mexico State Library for the Blind and the Albuquerque/ Bernalillo County Library hard-pressed to fill her audio reading lists as she progressed through entire collections of fiction writers. Born Nancy Joan Conway, Nancy was raised in Pittsburgh by parents, Dorothy Winowich Conway, a homemaker and St. Sava Serbian Eastern Orthodox Church volunteer, and her father, Joseph John "Red" Conway, a steel-mill open-hearth operator at the Homestead Works of Mesta Machine Co. Both parents predeceased her, as did her ex-husband, Dush Vukelich, also of Pittsburgh. Nancy grew up in the South Side neighborhood of Pittsburgh, two blocks from the South Side Works of Jones & Laughlin Steel Co., where many relatives, former in-laws and friends worked. Nancy graduated from South Side High School and planned to attend the University of Pittsburgh before marriage and child-rearing intervened. As a young girl during World War II, in the name of an unmarried aunt who lived with her parents, Nancy established a pen-pal relationship with a soldier serving overseas. The relationship Nancy created grew so passionate that at war's end, the soldier appeared at the family's doorstep to propose marriage, only to be shooed away by the broom-wielding aunt. Nancy is survived by her son, Dan Vukelich and his wife, Barbara Stephenson of Albuquerque, son, Chris Vukelich, who followed Nancy into the travel business, and his wife, Jamie Reger Vukelich, of Scottsdale, AZ, son, George Vukelich and his wife, Eileen O'Donnell Vukelich, of Downers Grove, IL, brother, Robert Conway and his wife, Susan, of Front Royal, VA, grandchildren, Elyse, James, Elizabeth and Daniel Vukelich, uncle, Paul Winowich of Pittsburgh; uncle William Winowich and his wife, Jacqueline, of Shaler Park, PA and several cousins. Interment will be at St. Sava Serbian Eastern Orthodox Cemetery in Castle Shannon, Pa.