Cynthia Noble

Ancestors

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Biography

I grew up in southern California, in an area in the 40's through the early 60's (to my knowledge) that was known as West Los Angeles. As a child we were visited by my mother's family, I was too young to remember them, but I did see pictures later as a young teenager. My father's mother, sister and brother lived somewhat closer so we saw them fairly regularly especially for Thanksgiving. My father loved to drive, he'd get a new Ford every couple of years, and we visited relatives, Aunt Lotta, other adults and a young man named Patrick at her cottage on Mission Beach near San Diego. Dad took us up to Washington to visit my mom's sister, Aunt Kappie, and their mother, Nettie, and on other trips to Yellowstone and Colorado and the South West. In the early 60's the state of California needed to build the Santa Monica Freeway Interchange which took the house my father built along with the entire neighborhood. We and the neighbors were only offered a fraction of what their property was worth and we all formed a group that fought CalTrans or whatever it was called back then. They finally got the value from their homes and that year I graduated from Daniel Webster Jr. High School, down the street from where we lived. We moved to Canoga Park, in the San Fernando Valley where I started high school and we were much closer to where my dad worked at Universal Studios. I was always influenced by my mother's artistic and ethereal personality. In high school I majored in art and after graduating, worked for a few years in the valley and downtown LA while taking night classes at Pierce Jr. College. During this time the Beatles became well known and I became a Beatlemaniac and "saw" them (couldn't hear them - the screaming was deafening) at the Hollywood Bowl with some friends. My mother had loved Elvis Presley but I think my father was indifferent. After high school I worked at the local mall in an Orange Julius kiosk and then as a clerk in the stationary department of the mall's equivalent of a Macy's. Later I was a claims correspondent at Occidental Life Insurance Co. in downtown LA and was roommates with my high school friend, Jane Lenhardt, later Jackson whose husband David, an aerospace engineer, introduced us to all the current rock and blues music that was happening in the LA area. In 1968 I moved to Connecticut for over a year. It was very interesting living in a place that has four seasons; heavy coats, mittens and snow boots were new to me. During that time my mother died on my 25th birthday. I got my first "real to me" job working as a graphic artist at a small printing company in West Hartford helped technically by Paul Boudreau, the production manager. I just happened to still be in Connecticut in 1969 and went to Woodstock. I moved back to the west coast and settled in the Eureka, California area in the early 70's. After being a partner in The Palace, a restaurant, a cook in another restaurant and a graphic artist in a print shop, later in an advertising agency, and eventually at a local weekly paper, then a daily newspaper, I obtained a BA at Humboldt State University in Painting in the mid 80's. In 1989 I met Sid Berg and I continued working as a graphic artist for various local newspapers and magazines over the years; now I'm retired and have taken up my earlier interest in becoming an artist working in oils and watercolors and stained glass. Sid taught me to SCUBA dive and how to live and work on a farm with horses, cows, sheep, chickens, with an orchard and gardens, finding that I love to propagate plants. I never married and never had children but plenty of cats and dogs, a parrot, and the rest of the farm animals. I have had the pleasure of traveling to Hawaii, Europe, Mexico, Central America, Canada and around the US. I hope to do much more traveling.

Sources

• First-hand information. Entered by Cynthia Noble at registration.