Nancy H. Harrison, a retired registered nurse who had been clinical coordinator at the Regional Institute for Children and Adolescents, Baltimore, died July 26 of pneumonia at Greater Baltimore Medical Center.

She was 84 and lived in Devon Hill in North Roland Park.

“She was such an elegant woman. She was gracious, very approachable and a very special lady,” said Barbara W. Gould, a Goucher College professor emeritus who lives in Ruxton. “She loved life and embraced it. That's who she was.”

“She was tall, willowy, artistic, full of integrity — she was strong,” Sarah Fenno Lord, a Bolton Hill writer and longtime friend, wrote in an email. “She had grit and grace and loved knowing what her friends were up to.”

The daughter of John William Hyder, a Glenn L. Martin Co. worker, and Lucille McAllister Hyder, a homemaker, Nancy Lee Hyder was born at home in Westminster.

She attended Westminster High School, where she was a member of the basketball team that won the Western Shore championship in 1946-1947 and fell one game short of the state title.

She also had leading roles in the high school's theatrical productions, family members said.

Mrs. Harrison had planned to study nursing at Union Memorial Hospital upon her 1947 graduation from Westminster High, but developed appendicitis and was taken to Franklin Square Hospital for surgery.

While recuperating in the hospital, she was “offered a stipend in addition to a full scholarship” if she would attend the nursing program at Franklin Square, said her daughter, Sally Uhler Boswell of Lewes, Del.

At the time of her graduation from Franklin Square in 1952, she was awarded the Dr. Luther Vizel Award for Obstetrical Nursing, and for the next two years was head nurse in labor and delivery at the West Baltimore hospital.

From 1957 to 1960, she was on the nursing staff at Lutheran Hospital of Maryland, then was appointed director of nursing at the Augsburg Lutheran Home and Lutheran Village in Lochearn.

In 1971, she accepted a position in psychiatric nursing at the Regional Institute for Children and Adolescents, then located on the grounds of the old Rosewood State Hospital in Owings Mills.

Within six months, Mrs. Harrison was recommended for a promotion to clinical coordinator. “Your combination of empathy and objective professionalism should serve as the model for all nursing personnel in all institutes,” stated an accompanying letter.

During her tenure at RICA, she achieved accreditation by the Joint Commission on Health Care Organizations in 1984, and helped develop plans and funding for a new facility that was built in the Beechfield neighborhood of Baltimore County.

“I met Nancy at RICA in the mid-1970s, where she was promoted to administer a startup program of intervention for autistic children who never spoke,” Ms. Lord said. “Nancy and I talked about that recently, remembering how heartening it was when silent, distracted little 5-year-olds did begin to speak.”

In 1978, Mrs. Harrison earned a bachelor's degree in human development from Antioch College.

After retiring in 1992, Mrs. Harrison, who lived in Halethorpe for six years and then in Roland Park, began studying art at the Mitchell School of Fine Arts in Bare Hills. She created landscape and still-life artworks.

“She was incredibly artistic,” her daughter said. “She worked in pastels, oils and liked drawing. In later years, she did a lot of floral designs, but she did not sell her work or display it widely.”

A gardener, Mrs. Harrison was a member of the Hardy Garden Club in Ruxton and won many awards for her flower arranging.

She became a judge in floral design and was much sought after to judge at local and regional shows, including the annual Philadelphia Flower Show.

In 2005, she was presented the Zone VI Flower Arrangement Achievement Award for “knowledge and mastery of flower arranging; for teaching and inspiring all who would learn; and for creative participation in every area of the field.”

“Her garden at home was small, but absolutely beautiful,” said Dr. Gould. “Her specialty was arranging flowers. Her floral designs were meticulous and stunningly beautiful. She was so deliberate — every single flower she put into the arrangement she'd look at from different angles. She was so precise.”

“She enjoyed mentoring people in flower arranging, and she was the consummate teacher,” Dr. Gould said. “She was incredibly kind and patient.”

For 30 years, Mrs. Harrison dealt with lung disease.

“Good medical care, my mother's medical knowledge of her case, careful adherence to treatment plans, aggressive pursuit of new treatments and her fierce determination to live brought her this far,” wrote Ms. Boswell in a biographical sketch of her mother.

On Mother's Day, Mrs. Harrison fell and broke her hip.

“The next day she was on a gurney outside of the operating room at GBMC. She was introducing herself to the entire surgical team and making sure they understood her terms,” Ms. Boswell wrote. “She could command a room flat on her back on a gurney with the deck stacked against her. She seemed fearless.”

After surgery, Mrs. Harrison spent five weeks in recovery and rehabilitation and went home in July, then developed pneumonia in both lungs.

Despite the condition, she was “determined to stay positive and alive,” Ms. Gould said.

Mrs. Harrison was an active communicant of the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd and served as a member of the Altar Guild.

A memorial service for Mrs. Harrison will be held at 11 a.m. Aug. 31 at her church, Carrollton and Boyce avenues, Ruxton.

In addition to her daughter, she is survived by her husband of 29 years, William Henry Harrison, a retired Bethlehem Steel Corp. Sparrows Point shipyard estimating engineer; a son, Dean Uhler of Tuscany-Canterbury; three stepdaughters, Margaret McDowell of Annapolis, Christine Harrison of Port Tobacco and Romeyn Allen of Halethorpe; two sisters, Louise Hole of Catonsville and Dolly Smith of Pembroke Pines, Fla.; four grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren. An earlier marriage to Edwin Lee Uhler ended in divorce.

frasmussen@baltsun.com