She returned to the role of first lady in 1978 after Peter Tali Coleman became the first popularly elected Governor of American Samoa.
[1] She attended the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa for one year, but was forced to withdraw before completing her degree in order to support her family following the death of her father.
She was modeling a dress loaned from Bishop Museum that had once been owned by the Hawaiian Royal Family, while he appeared at the event as a Kāhili bearer.
[1] Nora Stewart Coleman first visited in American Samoa on board the USS President Jackson (APA-18) with her husband in June 1952.
[1] Nora Stewart Coleman, who was born and raised in Hawaii, became the first Pacific Islander to serve as First Lady of American Samoa in history.
[1] In 1977, Peter and Nora Stewart Coleman returned to American Samoa to launch his candidacy in the territory's first ever gubernatorial election.
[2] In 2003, Coleman's Kamehameha high school class ring, which she had lost while swimming in Waikiki in 1938, was returned to her by a woman from Virginia.
[1][6] Her funeral was held at Saint Patrick Catholic Church in Honolulu on May 20, 2005, with burial next to her husband, the late Governor Peter Tali Coleman, in Diamond Head Memorial Park.