Nancy Cooke de Herrera

Nancy Cooke de Herrera (born Nancy Veitch, 1922–2013)

Early life and education De Herrera grew up in Piedmont, California, the daughter of a naval officer and Oakland, California, businessman and banker, "Captain" Edward Veitch. She attended Piedmont High School with her lookalike sisters, Ardagh and Doryce, and studied bacteriology at Stanford University for three years during the 1940s (Class of '43). As the wife of a prominent family member, she performed hostess duties for Admiral Nimitz, Admiral Halsey, and Admiral Towers during World War II. She gave birth to three sons and divorced her husband after nine years of marriage.

While in Paris in 1951, she met a member of the American team that raced at Le Mans, named Luis de Herrera, whom she married a year later. The couple moved to Herrera's home country of Argentina and had a daughter in 1954.

In 1957, de Herrera won a nationwide contest sponsored by a group of American (USA) magazines. Her prize was a world tour to promote American fashion. Afterwards, the United States Information Service (USIS) enabled her to visit governments around the world and advise them on fashion. For twelve years she was a leading figure in the fashion industry and was referred to as the "U.S. Ambassadress of Fashion" while traveling to 15 countries to present American couture.

De Herrera worked as a publicist for Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the 1960s and traveled with him on a trip to South America. During her dozens of trips to India and Tibet she is reported to have had meetings with the Dalai Lama, the sixteenth Gyalwa Karmapa, Sir Edmund Hillary, the Shah of Iran, King Hussein of Jordan, and Satya Sai Baba. and Sheryl Crow. In 2008, she published the novel, Never Tango with a Stranger: Love in Peron's Argentina.

Books Cooke de Herrera, Nancy (1993) Beyond Gurus: A Woman of Many Worlds, Blue Dolphin Pub Cooke de Herrera, Nancy (2008) Never Tango with a Stranger: Love in Peron's Argentina, iUniverse