Robert Chisholm Noël passed away Wednesday, April 5 at the age of 93. In his long life, Bob made many friends through his career in higher education, but most people in Santa Barbara might know him best as a stalwart on the Santa Barbara School Board for over a decade at the turn of this century.
Born in 1929 in Pasadena, California, he grew up during the Depression in a small household with his parents and older brother, Tom. In his youth and young adulthood, he bred and sold parakeets to make extra money. He also was a bicycle paperboy, pressed early vinyl records at a factory, and assisted in his father's professional photography studio. Tom taught him how to build custom hot rods by swapping out the frequently interchangeable parts on early automobiles, and how to get into, and occasionally out of, trouble. As a kid he was curious and mischievous, and he held onto those traits his entire life.
Bob loved jazz and big bands, and, as a teen, he would spend his Sundays dancing in his leather-soled shoes, "to the left of the bandstand where all the best dancers were,” at the Hollywood Palladium. He was drafted in his early twenties into the Korean War, and he was stationed in Japan and Korea as a Morse code operator. He loved experiencing different cultures but was strongly against war. When he returned home, using GI Bill funds, he studied at several universities, and received his PhD in Political Behavior and International Relations from Northwestern University.