Familiar Face – Ed Nuhfer

Ed Nuhfer has become a familiar face over his cumulative 17 years in Niwot thanks to everyday walks with Zion, his dog, and the time he regularly spends at local establishments such as Winot Coffee and Garden Gate Café doing work on his laptop. We wanted to hear a bit of Nuhfer's life story, so we asked him a few questions.

Left Hand Valley Courier (LHVC) - Where are you from, and besides Niwot, where have you lived?

Ed Nuhfer (EN) - I'm originally from a small town on the Ohio River, Parkersburg West Virginia, but I've lived and worked in many places - Louisiana, Ohio, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Colorado, Idaho, northern and southern California, with some extended visits to Japan, Malaysia/Borneo. I've found things to like about every area I've lived in. Even when an area wasn't my favorite, I found people there who became favorites. I lived in the Niwot area when I worked for CU Denver, and I returned after retiring from Cal State Universities on the west coast. The "curse of Niwot" apparently fell on me.

LHVC – It's amazing how many places you've lived and that you decided to ultimately settle in Niwot.

EN - Living around the country has produced many friends and a few remaining family members scattered around the country. Being close to an airport from which I can get to anywhere in the country in just a few hours is admittedly one attraction for living here. I was able to celebrate my step-son Chad's birthday with him in Connecticut two weeks ago in between projects with USAFA [United States Air Force Academy] and U of WY.

LHVC - Tell us about your education and what your work-life has entailed.

EN - I've been a science nerd for as long as I can remember, which probably started with being a curious kid who liked being outdoors a lot and having parents who bought me lots of books and read to me in my pre-school years. My parents valued education because they were denied it by being lower income young folks during the depression.

I'm seeing denial of educational opportunity happen to more and more young people now as our society values money more than taking care of each other and those values place many opportunities beyond the reach of those who are not born into privilege. I've been lucky in having great mentors from every college where I was educated: Potomac State College, Marietta College, University of New Mexico, and stints at Louisiana State in New Orleans and Stanford in California. COVID took my PhD advisor from New Mexico a few weeks ago, which was a deep loss.

My work has spanned industry, government, and teaching and research universities. I now pride myself a bit at being the poster child of a failure at retirement. In 1987-88, I developed a second profession in helping faculty succeed in their careers--successfully producing good research in their fields and good learning in their students, and I never really dropped that.

Since "retiring," I've had time to pursue some research that I couldn't do while working full-time and I've recruited teams of some of the best faculty from North America to work with me. The work led on its own into psychology and mathematics, where we made some disrupting discoveries. I've published with others on a half-dozen peer reviewed papers in the last couple of years with a lot of the writing occurring at the Winot Coffee shop and outside at a table of Garden Gate restaurant.

I just returned from a week-long event with the University of Wyoming where I've served as an external mentor for about six or seven years now. Their faculty and grad students have become quite special to me as friends and co-researchers.

LHVC - What are some highlights in your everyday life?

EN - I love my neighborhood and my neighbors here, all of whom are wonderful. A few passions I have outside of universities are cycling, gardening, cooking. I used to have a passion for martial arts, but aging puts inevitable limits on the body.

LHVC - Tell us about your family.

EN - "Family" that I share my home with here is my wonderful dog, Zion, a rescue boxer-cattle-dog-sheep-dog-husky-plus from Best Friends animal shelter. I wish most people had as good a personality as she does. Most mornings, our ritual is to walk from home to Winot Coffee shop, where I get my coffee, do some writing and she gets her dog biscuits. Then, we head out on a long walk. Zion now has a lot of fans who frequent the coffee shop. A comment I love from a Winot patron is: "When I come back, I want to come back as a dog -THAT dog!"

LHVC - In what ways do you connect with the community?

EN - I do volunteer work for a few organizations and some colleges and I campaigned for Bernie Sanders, which got me more heavily into the political scene than I cared to be. After the elections, I started dropping political groups. My strength lies in the work I do with higher education, so I've decided to put my time into doing what I do best...that's not being a political partisan. I find current politics too toxic. I'm also looking forward to being able to attend more music events at Red Rocks and Chautauqua and do road tripping and camping again.

If you have a suggestion for a Familiar Face in Niwot or Gunbarrel, please send a message to [email protected].