Posted on 10/21/2019
Jerry John Nuss (March 22, 1925 - October 17, 2019)
Captain Jerry John Nuss, United States Navy, Retired, died peacefully in the early morning of October 17, 2019.
The relatives and friends of Captain Jerry Nuss are invited to attend his Mass of Christian Burial to be celebrated at 1:00 PM, Wednesday October 23, 2019, at St. Mary's Catholic Church, 95 Hasell Street, Charleston. Rite of Committal will be private. All are invited to attend a reception at the family residence following the service.
Captain Jerry Nuss was born to loving parents, Fred and Ruth Rosalie, and a large extended family of German immigrants, in Nebraska during the spring of 1925. An athletic boy, he played basketball and taught himself to write with both hands. His younger sister, Sharon, was his best friend throughout childhood. When he grew “too old” to play with a little sister, however, Sharon showed just how determined she was to keep her best friend: she punched him in the belly, knocking him down the stairs. She proved tough enough to hang out with Jerry and the boys and was his dear friend for life.
The Navy colored his life. As a teenager, he read about the history of the Navy and the opportunities that the service might provide a boy from McCook, Nebraska, and so he set his sights on the Naval Academy. At 18, he took the train from Lincoln, Nebraska to Annapolis, Maryland and graduated with his classmates Bill Crowe, Jim Stockdale and Jimmy Carter in the spring of 1946.
As a young lieutenant and graduate student at Stanford University, Jerry frequently partied in San Francisco, where he met and flirted outrageously with a gorgeous young college graduate named Norma Lane. He nicknamed her “Melody” Lane after a popular tune, and the name stuck – as did the couple. They were married in July of 1955 and cut the wedding cake with a sabre.
While he was at sea, his first child was born. “Beautiful eyes and hair,” Melody telegraphed, adding: “No periscope.” A daughter! But the couple could not agree on a name for the young girl—Jerry was insistent on Judy—so Jerry filled his naval hat with names and asked Melody to draw one. It appeared that fate had decided the little girl’s name would be Judy—until Melody shook out the rest of the folded names and saw “Judy” on every single slip. Following soon after was a delightful young son whose name they both agreed upon: John Robert Nuss.
Through nearly three decades with the Navy and in ports of call around the world, Jerry captained four submarines and a nuclear submarine tender. He was among the first officers selected by Admiral Rickover to captain a submarine in the United States nuclear fleet. (When Admiral Rickover made it clear that liars could not be trusted with our nation’s most devastating weaponry, Jerry confessed that he was, in fact, a serial liar: he regularly told his children that Santa Claus was real. Rickover showed leniency and chose him for the program.)
Despite the Cold War, his commands were, by all accounts, festive. Deployed all around the world, Captain Nuss’s submarines, when not conducting surveillance or stalking Soviets, were filled with banter and laughter. Exercising the officer’s prerogative, Captain Nuss chose which records would be broadcast over the PA system. One of his favorite stories was of an absolute standstill in the submarine during the final act of “La Traviata,” the kind of dead quiet portrayed in movies: officers in the control room struggled with quivering lips and members of the crew wiped away tears in the mess hall as Violetta, shortly before succumbing to tuberculosis, sang her final duet with Alfredo.
Captain Nuss’s in-depth studies of partying were well-known to his crew, who looked forward with relish to onshore holiday parties and celebrations. Such festivities went swimmingly until Captain Nuss delegated the punch to an eager subordinate. His lieutenant prepared a punch with Jerry’s hand-written recipe, but failed to realize that it was to be made with gin OR vodka OR rum OR whiskey. The devastation the following morning after this disastrous bacchanal was one of the closest-kept secrets of the Cold War, and Captain Nuss banned all crew members from cooking until each had demonstrated familiarity with commas, conjunctions, and lists.
Captain Nuss’s last port of call was Charleston, the one city that he and Melody could agree to reside in in a post-Naval world. Jerry, Melody, Judy, and John moved into a single house on Anson Street, and Jerry entered civilian life with a job on the administrative staff at the College of Charleston, where he worked for 28 years. He loved the College so much, in fact, that he enrolled there as a student and earned his second B.A. with honors alongside the class of 1990. He taught his grandchildren how to swim in the College pool and established a scholarship there to support students who could otherwise not afford to attend.
In Charleston, Jerry was an active member of the Rotary Club, serving as President and as District Governor, and worked to change the rules in order to admit women to the Club; served as a Life Member and President of the Charleston Council of the Navy League, for which he was also a National Director; chaired the United Way Campaign for the College of Charleston for twenty years; caused mayhem on the greens at the Country Club with the Little Rascals; and was heavily involved in the Historic Ansonborough Neighborhood Association. Despite a distaste for Irish whiskey, Jerry loved the parties at the Hibernian Society—and was always sure to pay penance in the pews of St. Mary’s on Sundays. For their service to St. Mary’s, Jerry and Melody, both members of the Holy Name Society, received an apostolic blessing from Pope John Paul II.
His German upbringing and his Navy training made for an interesting man. Much to the chagrin and dismay of his wife, Jerry pronounced Los Angeles with a hard “G” and salted his food before tasting it. (Melody was able to curb the latter habit by tripling the salt in a recipe; some habits, though, just die harder.) On the bright side, he never forgot a joke and knew how to party. Like Hannibal before him, he crossed the Alps in winter—not on an elephant, but in a heavily used Volkswagen Beetle he’d purchased while studying at the British Imperial Defense College. Breaking down four times in snowbound mountains during that wintry trip taught him the true meaning of Christmas: a sacred time to give each family member a new flashlight and a pack of batteries. Every. Single. Year.
In his 90s, Jerry embarked upon his final tour of duty: to find the best chocolate milkshake in Charleston County. He pursued this elusive treasure — a shake with the right consistency, texture, and chocolate-to-ice cream ratio — ardently and with good spirits, but admitted that his mission was rooted in nostalgia: he was looking to revive within him a little bit of his youth, a little bit of that boy in Nebraska whose little sister was his best friend.
He is survived by his son, John Nuss; his daughter and son-in-law, Judy and Bill Werrell; his grandson, Alex Werrell; his granddaughter, Jane Werrell Prevost, her husband, Charles Prevost, and their baby boy, his precious great-grandson, Charles Prevost, Junior; his niece and her husband, Ann and Dave Palenshus; and his nephew, Kent Loeffler. His best friend, Tegger the Bedlington Terrier, lovingly continues her watch and keeps his chair warm. The family would especially like to thank Luc Maxineau for his generous and heartfelt help in looking after Jerry as he grew wary of stairs.
James A. McAlister Funerals & Cremation
1620 Savannah Highway
Charleston, South Carolina 29407
P: 843-766-1365
F: 843-766-6938
charlestonfunerals.com
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