Allen "Nick" Nickelson

Allen (“Nick”) Nickelson, 78, of Corrales, passed away on Tuesday, July 16, 2024, in the UNM Sandoval Regional Medical Center in Rio Rancho, after a long and valiant fight with lung disease. At his bedside were friends and relatives, including his devoted wife of 52 years, Karen. 

Allen was born on July 24, 1945, near Springfield, Illinois, to Virginia and Earl Nickelson. In the early 1950s, the Nickelson family moved to Albuquerque where Earl entered the local VA hospital to receive treatment for a blood disease, which nevertheless claimed his life, leaving Virginia to raise Allen and his sister Sandra on her own. Allen’s mother then opened a store on Albuquerque’s Central Avenue called Uniforms Inc. that sold work clothing, to support herself and her children. 

After graduating from high school, Allen had the great accidental fortune to meet Don Stegen, of Seal Beach, CA. Don gave him a job pumping gas, but their relationship became a lifelong connection. Don was a father figure, mentor, and role model and he never lost sight of the impact that Don had on him. His wife, Martha said, “We think of you as a second son.” Many holidays, races, and Balloon Fiestas were enjoyed with this extended family that also includes Stacey, Todd, Leslie, and their families. 

Returning to Albuquerque after a few years and after working at various jobs in Albuquerque, including a brief stint maintaining the sawmill machinery at the Bates Lumberyard in Albuquerque’s South Valley, Allen took a job with Sparton Southwest Inc. (Later Sparton Technology Inc.). His rise from janitorial duties to the top management of that company reads like a Horatio Alger story. His first assignment at Sparton was simply sweeping the floors, and then keeping an inventory of the company’s tools, but it wasn’t long before the firm recognized Allen’s innate mechanical savvy and leadership abilities and began promoting him into a series of increasingly important management positions. 

By the time Allen retired from Sparton Technology forty years later, he was the manager of not only the Albuquerque plant’s facilities but of several other of the company’s operations across the nation. When Allen joined Sparton, the company was only making printed circuit boards, but eventually it manufactured items as diverse as parachutes for the military, mail sorting machines for the U. S. Postal Service, and remote sensors for the Border Patrol. Throughout his long relationship with Sparton, Allen had a special focus on the wellbeing of his employees, improving their working conditions, representing their interests in any interactions with upper management, and even helping them through personal problems. He was liked and respected by all members of the organization both above and below him. One of Allen’s greatest accomplishments at Sparton was meeting and marrying a beautiful company secretary named Karen, to whom he would be married for over half a century. After retiring from Sparton, Allen became the owner of Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS). 

At some point in his early youth, Allen decided that going as fast as possible in any vehicle with wheels, and even some without wheels, would be one of his main pursuits in life. During his lifetime he raced anything from riding lawnmowers to race cars. During the 1960s, at Albuquerque’s Speedway Raceway, he raced stock cars on an oval clay track. In recent years he was the crew chief for Don Stegen when the latter made yearly attempts to set speed records with custom cars at the Bonneville Salt Flats. During his life, he was a frequent spectator at the Indianapolis 500, and he once drove one of the former Daytona Speedway race cars around that Florida track at over 150 mph. Among the no-wheels races that Allen participated in was the annual Great Rio Grande Raft Race, in which he and his good friend Jim Terrell frantically paddled a rubber raft over water, mud, and across sand bars in a race to the finish line among hundreds of other muscle-powered watercraft of all types, often scoring high among the finishers, but mainly just having a lot of fun.

 Allen had a special love of motorcycles, both the off-road and street types and rode them in a variety of competitions. He raced dirt bikes in enduros, motocross, and roadless cross-country events, and he was a regular participant for many years in the annual Cloudcroft Enduro in the mountain forests near Alamogordo, New Mexico. On pavement, he participated in scenic rides, road rallies, and numerous “Iron Butt” competitions, which are grueling tests of endurance in which riders travel continually both day and night for hundreds of miles to reach a series of designated waypoints, and then return within a set time frame. For simple pleasure riding and relaxation, Allen rode dirt bikes with his friends over many miles of mountain, forest, and desert trails, and on pavement, he knew the highways and byways of America from one end of the country to the other as seen from the seat of a touring motorcycle. He once rode six hundred miles just to have breakfast with a friend, which he later said was “kind of a dumb thing to do,” although he did enjoy the ride. Karen often accompanied Allen on these highway jaunts, riding on the seat behind him, and in 2012 they crossed the Atlantic to ride a motorcycle in Scotland together, and they also visited London and Paris. 

Allen was also a classic car enthusiast who restored or modified a number of interesting automobiles, including a 1940 Ford sedan that he returned to like-new condition and painted a bright red, a 1950s pickup truck with a custom engine and an iridescent paint job that changed colors as you walked around it, and a 1949 farm tractor for which he found practical uses such as landscaping his and his friends’ properties. 

Allen was the embodiment of the old saying that “a friend in need is a friend indeed,” and he was indeed that kind of friend to everyone he knew, and to many strangers as well. He was always quickly on the scene whenever he heard of a friend in need, whether it was to help in building a garage, landscape a yard, move a houseful of furniture, lay tile, or any other task that he could assist with. Few people were more generous with their time, despite all his duties at Sparton and his own personal projects. He could also provide advice and comfort to friends going through hard times and who needed emotional support. Allen’s friendship was truly a blessing to all who were privileged to know him. 

Allen and Karen lived for many years in homes on Albuquerque’s West Side, which eventually became the city of Rio Rancho, and they finally built a unique and beautiful home in Corrales, high on a bluff with a magnificent, sweeping view over hundreds of square miles of the Rio Grande Valley and the Sandia Mountains. Here for over twenty years the Nickelson’s hosted many gatherings of friends, who never failed to enjoy Allen’s recounting of his many experiences riding motorcycles, driving cars, or any other activity in which he was involved, for Allen was one of the world’s premier raconteurs. With his wry sense of humor and unique way of describing things, he often had his audiences in stitches over some tale about a crazy thing that had happened to him during a race or an incident that he’d observed or been involved in. Those hilarious stories will remain fondly in the memories of his friends for as long as they live, and their only regret is that with Allen’s passing, they will not be able to hear any more of them. 

Allen's life cannot be summed up solely by his success in the business world, the number of motorsport events he attended or participated in, his car and motorcycle projects, the races he won, or the miles he covered, but rather by the many lives that he touched and made better. He will be sorely missed. 

Allen was preceded in death by his parents, Virginia and Earl Nickelson, and his sister Sandra Nickelson. 

He is survived by his wife of 52 years, Karen Nickelson of Corrales, NM; his daughter Jenna Carroll and grandchildren Kierstin, Kourtney, and Louis of Sebastian, FL; his niece Sheri Hoyne and great nephews Dalton and Dustin, of Olympia, WA; his niece Cari Oneal and great nieces Erika, Kathryn, and Nicole of Salt Lake City, UT. He also leaves behind numerous cousins in Illinois. 

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the Mayo Clinic, Phoenix, AZ; Barrow Neurological Institute, Phoenix AZ; or St. Jude’s Hospital.