Henry J. Nuss

Henry J. Nuss, 84, a former printer, a veteran of World War I, and man of many stories, died August 14, 1979, a few days after suffering a stroke.

He was born July 18, 1895, in Newark, New Jersey, and he lived in the area most of his life. Nuss’s mother died when he was young, and he left school after eighth grade to go to work to help his father support his younger siblings. Nuss eventually apprenticed with a printer, and that would become his trade for his whole working life.

After the United State’s entered World War I, Nuss was drafted, and he shipped off to France in 1918. He was selected to be the bugler for his company and became a corporal. He spent a year in France, during which time he was wounded in action, but later returned to his unit.

After returning from the war, he re-entered the printing trade, and he owned and operated a printshop in Newark for many years. He married Annette Crawford in Montclair, N.J., on July 29, 1925, and they had one daughter, Jean, born Feb. 3, 1932.

When his daughter and her family moved to Ketchum, Idaho, in 1976, Henry and Annette went with them. He spent his last few years of retirement in Idaho, enjoying the often cloudless sky.

Nuss loved telling stories about his life: the time as a kid he pitched both games of a baseball double-header and won both; how as a child he had to wake up at 3 a.m. to milk a cow before going to school or work; the time he showed up at a lake to fish and some friends were there, and had been fishing all day and caught nothing, but he decided to try anyway and pulled out a fish on his first cast; how an Army major had just walked down a long line of men in his company, stopped in front of Nuss, looked at him and said: “You’re the bugler.”

Nuss was a member of the Masonic Lodge in New Jersey. Survivors include his wife, Mrs. Annette Nuss; one daughter, Mrs. Jean Passaro of Ketchum; one sister, Alice Kreling, St. Louis, Mo.; and two grandchildren. He was preceded in death by two brothers and four sisters.

Nuss died at Moritz Community Hospital in Sun Valley, Idaho. His ashes were buried in a private ceremony at Ketchum Cemetery in Ketchum, Idaho, on Sept. 1, 1979.