Columnist connected with readers for more than 30 years
Gary Nuhn could be acerbic and condescending and didn’t seem to care if what he said was popular or not.
It didn’t seem to bother the readers, either.
“They always read him,” said Hal McCoy, an award-winning writer himself who still writes sports for the Dayton Daily News, where Nuhn worked beside him for more than 30 years, the last several before Nuhn retired in 2000 as the columnist who followed legendary Si Burick.
Nuhn retired to Florida several years ago, where he was in memory care the last month. He died at age 77 on Friday.
Per his request, there will be no ceremony and his ashes will be spread in upstate New York near his hometown.
Nuhn is survived by his ex-wife Sue Ellen, daughter Nicole of Columbus, son Mikal, of Texas, and sister Nancy Fisher of Blanchester. He had one grandson.
When a good UD basketball player didn’t make grades, Nuhn insisted UD do the right thing, which was release him from the team, which the school did in part after reading what Gary wrote in the newspaper.
When the University of Michigan flew a plane over its stadium welcoming Value City University on a trailing banner, acknowledging the new Schottenstein Center’s inside advertising, many laughed while Nuhn wrote, “Most universities name buildings after famous coaches. Ohio State named theirs after a couch.”
During our first assignment together at the 1971 state high school basketball championships at OSU’s St. John Arena, there were no telephones in the first row of the second deck, where we were positioned to write and send out stories.
In pre-computer/cell phone
days, portable typewriters and notebooks were wedged together on a pine board balanced by our knees, and our deadline for one of the games featuring Tipp City was 15 minutes before the game was scheduled to end. It cost the DDN plenty of nickels and dimes to do that, as Nuhn had to find an empty pay phone booth in a crowd of more than 13,000.
He called the DDN desk and began dictating my story, running back and forth between the phone and where we were sitting, while the phone hung limp with a sign he pasted on the front, “out of order.”
We filed our story in time and fans eventually were able to use the phone.
Confronting long lines at a restaurant in Birmingham one year for an NCAA weekend, he spotted one of our colleagues from another paper finishing his meal with three empty seats at the table.
Nuhn led me over and we sat down with a waitress questioning when we arrived. We not only ordered, but we also finished our meals before some of those still in line were waiting to be seated.
Remember the famous Ed Young basket with a second left against DePaul that put UD fans in a frenzy leaping over the railings onto the court? They also trashed my year-long notes I left on the table and Nuhn spent the rest of the night admonishing me for leaving the notes exposed.
He also had time to write, “Schellenberg to Chapman to Young, three names that roll off the tongue.” Look it up on You Tube for the rest and try to get some sleep tonight as that tune rolls around in your head.
I leave you with a story about his roof, just to show his inclinations weren’t always accurate.
Failing to find a ladder long enough to help him clear some vines off his roof, Nuhn — with none of his family home to help — propped the ladder on two trash cans, ending up with two broken wrists following a fall.
Not wishing to bother anyone at a hospital, or call his family for help, he called me, just home following a Dayton Bombers game.
He wanted to know if I could drive him to the hospital the next day to have his wrists repaired. He was given some Tylenol to get him through the night. After laughing, I took him to a real emergency room immediately. He had his wrists casted and I drove him home at 3 a.m. A day or two later, we went back to the hospital to check on any healing progress.
Lots of other former colleagues talked about Nuhn.
Dave Long said, “He gave readers a reason to buy the Daily News.”
Bucky Albers said Gary “always had freelance offers from the best golf magazines, which only asked the best writers.”
“Dude was a genius,” said Chick Ludwig.
He didn’t care who he offended as long as it was clean, right and fair.