The first time Mary Lily Nuckolls laid eyes on Summit Square, it was the day she moved in. Her husband, Jim, was already ill, and their daughter—fearing the isolation of their home in rural Galax, Virginia—had urged them to come closer, to a place where care and companionship could carry them through. It was a leap of trust, of necessity, and ultimately of belonging.
Mary Lily’s story, like many of her generation, begins in the South in the years when small towns still shaped the rhythm of life. She was born in North Carolina, raised near Raleigh, and studied education at Duke. Teaching came naturally: she loved the energy of sixth graders, their quick minds and restless curiosity, their eagerness to test limits.
It was during those years that she met Jim, a lanky basketball player at Davidson College, through mutual friends. Their courtship stretched across campuses and cities, through his medical training and her years in the classroom, until they married and returned to the Blue Ridge foothills. Galax became their home in 1972, not by chance but by promise. Jim’s mother had insisted that if her son went to medical school, he must come back and serve the town that so badly needed doctors. He did.
While Jim built his practice in internal medicine, Mary Lily became its quiet engine. She managed the office, balanced the books, and steadied a practice that once teetered under the weight of long hours and limited resources. She also stepped into public life, almost by accident. After attending one Grayson County Democratic Committee meeting, she left as its chair—a position she held for ten years. Politics in a rural county was less about ideology than persistence: showing up, listening, finding a way to make sure people felt heard. Along the way, she forged connections that carried her into the orbit of state leaders, from local officials to presidents.
But history, both personal and political, eventually yields to time. When Jim’s health faltered, the family gathered, insisting that Galax—its distance, its solitude—could no longer be the place for care. They moved to Summit Square, where Jim would spend his final years and where Mary Lily would remain, stitched into a new community.
Here, her influence takes a different form. She tends to the puzzle room, a quiet corner of Summit Square where donated puzzles spill across tables. It is a small act of stewardship, but one that carries weight. Residents pass through at odd hours, unable to sleep or in need of company, stopping to fit a piece into place. What might seem like a diversion becomes, in her hands, a practice of continuity and connection. “You can’t walk by without putting in at least one piece,” she says, laughing, though she knows it is true.
In the arc of Mary Lily Nuckolls’ life, there are moments that speak of duty—returning to Galax because a community needed doctors, stepping into politics because no one else would, managing a practice so her husband could focus on patients. At Summit Square, her work is quieter but no less telling. A puzzle is never just a puzzle; it is an unfinished whole that demands patience, persistence, and faith that the pieces will eventually fit.
