[2] He was a literary critic, teacher, writer, and artist; he and his wife were both active in the Quakers and part of the Conscientious Objectors movement in World War II.
After his wife's death, in 1960, he worked to preserve her literary legacy, founded the Ruth Suckow Memorial Association, remarried Georgeanna (Georgia) Washburn Dafoe, and taught at Claremont College before retiring.
Local Historian Dorothy Grant describes his family this way: his father was in banking and real estate while his mother was a homemaker.
During that time he discovered contemporary American poetry as well as fiction, and especially admired Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg and Vachel Lindsay.
He enrolled at Columbia University graduate school, with the idea of continuing an academic career, which ended when H. L. Mencken accepted one of his stories for the American Mercury.
Dorothy Grant writes that Nuhn described their meeting when he helped to dedicate the Ruth Suckow Memorial Park in Earlville in 1982.
He had driven to Earlville from Cedar Falls, they had a long afternoon of good conversation, and then they were invited to a chicken dinner at a neighbor’s house.
Christian wrote, “During this period (of bee keeping) a letter arrived from a young literary critic in Cedar Falls who asked for ‘disposition towards pilgrims visiting you: if or when you are at ‘home.’” She apparently said yes, because he drove his Model T to Earlville, beginning a relationship that lasted both of their lives.
Ruth wrote to her aunt, “We start out with several things in our disfavor, but a very great deal of love in our favor.” An observer said, “Ferner found an artist who could translate the Midwest, and in Ferner, Ruth found a critic who could understand the translation.”[5] Rebecca Christian describes the next seven years of Nuhn and Ruth’s lives together by saying that they traveled extensively: “roosting and writing in cabins, ramshackle old houses or writers’ colonies in places such as the Iowa Mississippi river town of McGregor; northern Minnesota; Des Moines; the MacDowell Colony at Peterborough, N. H.; and Washington, D. C. They also visited the writers’ retreat, Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, where Suckow hated the pretentious atmosphere of artsy largesse from people ‘rotten with money’ but loved the quiet and the food.” At Yaddo, each writer had a small cabin and meals were brought on a tray and left at the door, so they could focus on their writing.
[6] At the MacDowell Colony, in Peterborough, New Hampshire, Nuhn began a series of oil character sketches he later called “Figures of the Thirties.” They included John Cowper Powys, Charles Wakefield Cadman, Robert Frost, Henry Wallace – and Charles Hearst, of Cedar Falls, The collection has been exhibited at the University of Northern Iowa.
He wrote, “Most of the persons portrayed in this collection were fellow colonists of myself and my wife, Ruth Suckow, in the early 1930s, at Yaddo, the art colony near Saratoga Spring, New York....Included in the list are the names of some nationally-known artists, playwrights, poets, essayists, composers, and novelists as well as the name of Henry A. Wallace, who is described as “Agriculturist, Author, Statesman.” Dorothy Grant notes that the collection provides valuable insights into the political scene as well as the Arts during the 1930s.
The article begins with the comment that “Some may think of farmers as conservative, but that view ignores a long tradition of rural radicalism in the United States.
In the early years of the Great Depression, that radicalism found powerful expression in the subverting of farm foreclosures and tax sales.
The technique was simple—when a farm was foreclosed for overdue taxes or failure to meet mortgage payments, neighbors would show up at the auction and intimidate any potential buyers.
Then the farm and equipment would be purchased at a token price and returned to the original owner.”[10] In 1934 Nuhn was invited to Washington, D. C. to work as a writer in the Agricultural Adjustment Administration under Henry A. Wallace.
He founded the Cedar Falls Art League in the early 1940s and his mother, Anna, let him have a large upstairs room over the Miller Shoe store at 319+1⁄2 Main Street for the exhibits.
This was an active organization, offering art classes for children and adults, displaying artwork in exhibits, and sponsoring receptions.
Dorothy S. Grant, wife of one of the other founders, Martin, describes it this way in her self-published booklet, The Cedar Falls Supper Club (June 1993).
Not very long after Bill Reninger’s arrival in Cedar Falls, he and Jim Hearst, Paul Diamond, and Ferner Nuhn talked about organizing a discussion type club.
There would be a minimum of business, with no officers except a secretary who notified the members of the coming meeting, requested, and made reservations for the dinner.
In 1942, Harper Brothers published his critical work, The Wind Blew from the East: a study in the orientation of American culture.
Georgia also created an exhibit for the Suckow Library in Earlville, donated a bookcase from Ruth's Father, and helped gather mementos to display in a glass case.
[5] Georgia led the efforts to preserve the cottage where Ruth once kept her bees and wrote; however, the structure was not in good condition, so the decision was made to tear it down and create a park in its place.
He remembered her role in the efforts to establish the park: "The event was a fitting climax to Georgia's long labor of love in memory of Ruth Suckow.