Chancellor was born in Kentland, Indiana,[1] the daughter of James Robert Chancellor and Laura Maria Lowman Chancellor. Her father was a farmer.[2] She had a childhood accident and subsequent infection that, in adulthood, made her blind in one eye, and required both her legs to be amputated in separate surgeries (1962 and 1964).[3][4] In 1956, she resigned her civil service job to pursue a degree in engineering, which she completed at the University of Arizona.[5]
Alice Chancellor and Pat Nixon, at the 1971 presentation of the Outstanding Handicapped Federal Employee of the Year award
Career
Chancellor, who used a wheelchair,[6] worked as a stenographer and typist as a young woman, in private industry, for an Indiana draft board during World War II, and after 1952 in the Federal Civil Service.[4] In 1962, after her college degree was completed, she was an electronics engineer for the United States Army in Arizona, at the Electronic Proving Ground at Fort Huachuca.[5] She was named the Department of the Army's 1970 Handicapped Employee,[7] and won the 1970 Outstanding Handicapped Federal Employee of the Year award, which was presented to her at a March 1971 ceremony by Pat Nixon.[8][9]
Chancellor lived alone in her own house, and drove an adapted car. She enjoyed sewing clothes, for herself and for charity. In 1969, she donated 50 handmade Easter dresses to a nearby Indian reservation. She also made wardrobes for students at the Papago Indian School.[5] She died in 1985, in Sierra Vista, Arizona, aged 72 years.[1]
