Walter Terry King Nugent (IU faculty, 1963-1984) was born on January 11, 1935, in Watertown, New York.  He was the first child of Clarence A. Nugent, office manager of nearby paper mills, and Florence King Nugent, a former teacher and homemaker.  He died on September 8, 2021 at UW Northwest Hospital in Seattle, WA surrounded by his wife, children, and grandchildren.  He was the loving husband of Suellen Hoy.  He leaves behind a sister, Mary Rose Atkinson, of Urbana, Illinois; a brother, George W. Nugent, of Watertown, New York; and six children from an earlier marriage:  Katherine (Alan Yngve), Rachel (Brian Baird), David, Douglas (Ellen Mondress), Terry, and Mary, eight grandchildren and two great-granddaughters. 

He earned a B.A. from St. Benedict’s College in Atchison, Kansas, in 1954; an M.A. in European history from Georgetown University, in 1956; and a Ph.D. in American history from the University of Chicago in 1961.  He was a member of the history faculties of Kansas State University (1961-1963); Indiana University-Bloomington (1963-1984) where he was also an associate dean, director of university overseas study programs, and chair of the history department; and the University of Notre Dame (1984-2000), where he held the Andrew V. Tackes endowed chair.  He authored thirteen books, including The Tolerant Populists, Money and American Society 1865-1880, Crossings: The Great Transatlantic Migrations 1970-1914, Into the West: The Story of Its People, Habits of Empire: A History of American Expansion, and Color Coded: Political Change in the American West since 1950; and edited or co-authored a number of others.  He also published about two hundred essays and reviews and lectured around the United States and internationally.  He was a Guggenheim fellow (1964-65).  He had two Fulbright Awards (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1978-79) and University College Dublin (1991-92).  He was president of the Indiana Association of Historians (1981), the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (2000-2002), and the Western History Association (2005-06).  He worked his way through graduate school as a church organist and was a perennial subscriber to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. 

Please make donations in lieu of flowers to the Indiana University Archives, 1320 E. Tenth St., Bloomington, IN 47405.