Nicholas Nussbaum
September 2, 1952 - March 21, 2020
Obituary
Nick was born in Taunton, Massachusetts and was a long-time resident of Seattle. He passed away here on March 21, 2020. He is survived by his brother, Michel; sister, Nathalie; sister-in law, Joyce; nieces, Eleanor and Anna and many friends. He was greatly loved and respected by all.
His unique qualities are beautifully summarized by his friend Charles (Chuck) Rose:
Every so often, a new person joins your team with whom you feel a deep connection, when the initial sharing of ideas, interests, and capabilities that new coworkers do with one another rings out like a bell that this is someone who might become a friend. That’s how I felt nearly 20 years ago when Nick Nussbaum joined the Palladium project at Microsoft. He was brought in to work on secure UI and it was his interest in typography that initially got us talking; I had been curious about the way glyphs were specified via curves. Walks around the Microsoft campus chatting about random things grew into a friendship.
Nick’s interests were an archipelago of human endeavor and thought, each island explored well beyond the typical cursory study most people give to those topics that aren’t central to their lives. I remember talking with Nick about Linotype machines, excited that I was going to see one. It was like a door opening and Nick shared all sorts of interesting bits of minutiae about Linotype machines, their precursors, and the devices that supplanted them. He instructed me to focus on the letterform cassette in motion, which led me to see that it was performing a mechanical radix sort when returning the forms to the cassette for reuse.
He had a great love of film, both in its technical aspects and as an artform, and we spent hundreds of hours in dark theaters over the years watching independent cinema during the yearly Seattle International Film Festival. I loved to hear his stories about running the projectors when he was a student. He had a stamina for the festival I’ve never achieved and would go to see dozens of movies. Nick had a particular love of silent films and we would usually make a point of seeing the few showing at the festival and during other times in the year. One night that stands out for me was a showing of The Wind with the Maldives playing live accompaniment. It was potent.
Before his health declined, we enjoyed a few years of long weekends at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The plays were the framework on which a pleasant vacation was built. Many hours talking about random interests on the drive down and enjoyable lunches and dinners in between shows. We had been hoping his health would improve to the point that another visit to Ashland would have been possible.
Nick was a voracious reader and there didn’t seem to be a topic or genre that didn’t interest him. Over the years, he treated me to many suggestions for things I wouldn’t have considered reading, such as Kagan’s The Peloponnesian War and Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey & Maturin novels. As with many other areas in his life, he was interested in both the medium and the message. Type, printing, cataloging, and content were all alive to him.
In the last few years, as his health declined, things in which he took joy: programming, theater, movie going were all sacrificed to the logistics of mobility and health considerations. But he kept fighting. So many times, in the last year, I steeled myself for the awful news, but he kept beating back death. In January, it looked like he was finally turning a corner and starting to improve, out of the hospital with a path forward towards a more fulfilling life in front of him, but fate had one final cruel twist. I learned a week ago he had been diagnosed with coronavirus. Things went downhill fast and he passed away last night.
Rest in peace, Nick. I’m going to miss you terribly.
I knew Nick while he a student at MIT in the early ’70s. He helped me get a Letterpress Shop going inside a student activity that used it to do community service. He was active in that group doing community service of all kinds. Pointed me at a typographer friend in NYC who identified a font, we wanted to find more of.
He was also active in the campus student film groups, being the lead in holding an annual silent film in MIT’s Kresge Auditorium. Kresge has one of the best organs in New England. He also got one of our best organists to come & play the accompanying music.
Nick had many other involvements on campus.
I’m glad he found good friends in Seattle!
Sadden to hear of his passing.
Len Tower Jr, MIT ’71, Somerville, MA
Great summary of Nick – “random interests” begins it but it should have read “deep nearing encyclopedic knowledge of random interests.” Beyond that, he was always interested in the welfare of those he cared about – which may surprise some who saw only the gruff, brusque side of him, but trust me – he cared. My condolences to his family – one of last lengthy phone conversations he filled me in on his nieces and other younger members of his extended family. That was the Nick I knew.
I had the pleasure of getting to know Nick during his time and Tableau which developed into a friendship that continued into his time post Tableau. Nick was an engineer that inspired quality and focused on the craftsmanship behind developing software. Nick often held a higher bar than others around him. Nick would be frequently pushing us to think about the end users and make software that made sense to them. Beyond building software with Nick our conversations frequently wandered in to various topics from his enjoyment of SIFF to how trees communicate with each other and how that could apply to problems we were facing in our personal lives.
Nick clearly cared about everyone around him and genuinely wanted the best for them.
Nick and I met decades ago at a film series at SAM (Seattle Art Museum). He would sit a couple of rows behind me and after a couple of films, we got to talking, and we’ve been friends ever since. I describe Nick to my other friends as the “go-to” person, the person you’d call if you were on a quiz show and could call one person for the answer. One night (many years ago) when I came home and found a message on my voice machine that the NY Times had reviewed my book, I went crazy because it was too late to call the person who’d left the message, to late to get a newspaper to see for myself (this was so long ago, before the Internet). I called Nick–he said, “Give me a minute.” Two minutes later he called me back with the info that a library in LA could probably tell me about the review, and he had a phone number. I called the library; the librarian was so excited she went and found the review and read it to me. Nick and I would occasionally meet for dinner, before he got seriously ill, and we had many, many long and very interesting phone conversations. I am so very sad at his death, and send my condolences to his family and his friends.
I met Nick through my boyfriend when I was a student at MIT in the 80s and Nick lived in Cambridge, Mass. I lost touch with Nick about 15 years ago after my last visit to Seattle, but my ex-boyfriend stayed in touch. I have fond memories of Nick’s laughter and his answers to all the random questions I could throw his way. I think this may be the only obituary to ever include the phrase “mechanical radix sort.” Nick would approve. Rest in peace.
Tim Hyland, MIT ’88, Palm Springs, CA
I’m really sorry to hear about Nick. I remember him well from our days at MIT. We shared a birthday, and celebrated together a couple of times. His sense of humor will be greatly missed.
My first memories of Nick were when he and I were middle and high school students at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in the Bronx in the early 1970s. Nick was three years ahead of me. We became friends many years later when he visited the Lambert House LGBTQ Youth Center in Seattle as part of a Microsoft Day of Caring volunteer team. I remembered him from high school, introduced myself as the Lambert House Director, and he decided to volunteer weekly as the librarian for Lambert House. Nick gave me useful advice early in my tenure, both about how to focus, and not focus, the agency’s programs, and about my career. He was a spectacular librarian and loved meeting youth who came in to use the library while he was there every week for several years. He always spoke with them about books, made suggestions, and engaged them in conversation. He re-organized the library, added new sections, created a “New Arrivals” display shelf, and made other upgrades. Each week, after his volunteer shift, we would go out for dinner. This continued until he informed me that he could no longer physically go up the stairs to reach the second-floor library in our Victorian House that lacks an elevator. We continued to socialize after that for a couple more years. I am sorry to know that he passed and will remember him fondly always. Ken Shulman, Fieldston Class of 1973 and Lambert House LGBTQ Youth Center 2003-present.