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College in the 1950s when she attended a speech by Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy. As she stood outside in the rain after the event, waiting for her brother to pick her up, the senator pulled up in a limo and offered her a ride.

“No, thank you senator, I’m all set,” said Nancy, then 20. The story of her brush with fame has been handed down to her children and grandchildren and never failed to bring good-natured ribbing.

“Everyone would say, ‘Why didn’t you get in the car? You could have been one of the Kennedys,’” said her son, Jamie.

The retired receptionist, known for her warmth and quick wit, had an enthusiasm for life that never waned. She was a voracious reader and engaging conversationalist who loved talking about politics and culture and took an avid interest in the lives of others. She felt just as at ease working alongside “brainy people” at Harvard Law School as she did hanging out with her nine grandchildren and their friends, said her daughter, Ellen.

“She was enormously welcoming to so many people in her life,” her daughter said. “If you were 7 or 70, she was right there with you, eager to have a conversation.”

Nancy died from the coronavirus May 1 at Maristhill Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in Waltham. Massachusetts, following a long decline due to Alzheimer’s. She was 85.

Nancy Breen Lawton was raised in a big house on Carruth Street in Dorchester. She was one of six children of Eleanor and John Anthony Breen. Her father was chairman of the Boston Housing Authority and briefly served as deputy to Mayor John B. Hynes.

Nancy attended Notre Dame Academy and graduated from Emmanuel College, where she was president of the Dramatic Society and “was known for being able to nap in class sitting upright,” according to an obituary written by her daughter Ellen.

In 1960, Nancy married Tom Lawton, a mathematician who worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The couple raised their family in Belmont and spent summers at a ramshackle cottage in Manomet, a seaside village in Plymouth.

She began working as a receptionist in the early 1970s, starting as an iconic “Kelly Girl” for the temporary employment agency. Later, she spent 10 years as a receptionist at Harvard Law School’s Program on Negotiation.

“She just loved being in the middle of this academic setting where there were lots of smart people,” her daughter said.

She reveled in the Harvard Square atmosphere, the quirky characters and the book stores, restaurants, and shops.

After her husband’s death in 1987, Nancy found joy in the next chapter of her life. She loved connecting with family and friends and going to the movies and the theater. She was an unabashed critic who took pride in walking out if a show was awful. She loved traveling with her sister and friends.

While crossing the Canadian Rockies by train in the early 1990s, Nancy spent days hanging over the rail of the observation car, sneaking cigarettes with “some old hippie,” her daughter said.

She tried to strike up a conversation, but the man was “taciturn,” she later recounted. It wasn’t until after he disembarked that she learned from the conductor that he was music legend Neil Young, according to her daughter.

During a 2012 Globe interview, she described her realization that it was time to stop driving after she “started side-swiping cars.” She issued a blanket apology to the town of Arlington, the scene of the crime.