Ada Nunley

Hastings resident, Ada "Iris" (Daugherty) Nunley, 93, passed away Thursday, July 6, 2017, at College View Assisted Living & Memory Support, Hastings, Nebraska.

There will be no services. There will be no viewing or visitation as Iris was cremated.

Ada Iris (Daugherty) Nunley was born in Hastings, Nebraska on August 31, 1923, to P.R. & Jessie (Furry) Daugherty. Her mother died when she was five months old, and she and her sister, Beulah were raised in the home of her maternal grandparents, John & Ada Furry, on their farm south of Hastings.

She attended District 60 grade school and graduated from Hastings High School in 1940. She graduated from Hastings College in 1945. While attending Hastings College she worked at the Hastings Museum painting backgrounds for habitat groups for Albert Brookings, the museum's first director.

She lived in New York for two years where she studied at the Art Students League, after which she lived in San Francisco for two years. She returned to Hastings and did additional habitat groups for the museum, then moved to Lincoln, where she painted backgrounds for the State Museum and the Natural History Museum. During this period she met her future husband, Rick Nunley, a geology student.

They were married in 1956 and moved to Williston, North Dakota where her husband was employed as a petroleum geologist. During the next 34 years, they lived in many places including Australia and Alaska. In 1989, they retired and moved back to Hastings. She designed their retirement home and built it on the farm where she grew up. She opened a yarn and weaving shop, the Plum Nelly, which she ran for five years before retiring once again. She was a founding member of the Prairie Fibers Guild, and a member of the Outlook Book Club, and the League of Women Voters.

Iris had many interests. She loved reading, and the art of weaving and spinning. She probably inherited her artistic ability from her mother, a talented artist. She ended her life as she started, in Hastings, but in the interim, she traveled the world.