JotBlog

Nancy H. Dacek, a 12-year member of the Montgomery County Council who later served for more than a decade on the Montgomery County Board of Elections, died Jan. 12 at her home in Darnestown, Md. She was 81.

The cause was cancer, said a daughter, Kim Barnes.

Mrs. Dacek was first elected to the council in 1990 and represented upper Montgomery County. She and Betty Ann Krahnke, the late council member who also won a seat that year, were the first Republicans to serve on the body in two decades.

Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett, a Democrat who served with Mrs. Dacek on the council and its education committee, described her in a statement as a “voice for fiscal moderation and balanced growth” and as a “champion for the environment and for well-planned transportation infrastructure, planning, and construction.”

Advertisement

During her council tenure, Mrs. Dacek sought to protect Montgomery County’s agricultural reserve and industry and to support improvements in fire and rescue services. She advocated slow growth, rather than unbridled development, and helped obtain funding for the BlackRock Center for the Arts in Germantown, according to her family.

After the 1990 census, county council districts were redrawn in what Republicans considered a partisan effort to limit their influence. Mrs. Dacek moved from Potomac to Darnestown to avoid a contest with Krahnke in 1994. She was reelected that year and in 1998 before losing her seat in 2002 to Democrat Michael Knapp.

Soon after, then-Maryland governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) named Mrs. Dacek to the Montgomery County Board of Elections, where she served as president and more recently treasurer.

Advertisement

Nancy Frances Halter was born Jan. 11, 1934, in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1955, she received a bachelor's degree in political science from Wellesley College in Massachusetts and later completed a master's degree in education at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

She settled in the Washington area in 1974 and volunteered with local recreation centers and schools before becoming president of the Montgomery County Council of Parent-Teacher Associations in the 1980s.

Survivors include her husband of 57 years, Raymond F. Dacek of Darnestown; five children, Debbie Glass and Holly Dacek, both of New Market, Md., Kim Barnes of Radnor, Pa., Karen Dacek of Bainbridge Island, Wash., and Mickey Dacek of the District; two brothers; and nine grandchildren.

Notable deaths of 2015 and 2016

A look at those who have died.

“I’m one of a vanishing breed I guess,” Mrs. Dacek once told The Washington Post, “a moderate Republican.”

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZLmwr8ClZqiamanCor7InqpoppGjsLp5x2abmpuVoHquu82tnqillafGbq%2FOrqWtsV2Ytre1wmajnpmUmr9usMieqmaZpGKFcnuRaWhuZ2BmfHKAjm2ZnZtlaYR3eZicaJxlYWaydXnBnJ2bZWBqhqavlppwbJyUmKy0wM6rsGegpKK5