WHO AM I ?

Nancy Naomi Noble

Throughout my life I seem to have been a different person at different times. I was bom in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Aügust 26, 1934, to Earnest Lee Noble and Ruth Priddy Noble. I was named for my two grandmothers, Nancy (Noble) Jones and Naomi Priddy. My family said they should call me “Granny.” I was the youngest of my father’s six children and the only child born to my mother, his third wife. I was born during the Great Depression. (Maybe that’s why I can’t throw anything away!) My father had been injured in a fall while working on the 1 1 Street Blidge in Tulsa and he wasn’t able to work for a year. After he recovered he went to work for the Midland Valley Railroad Co. as a Depot Agent and Telegrapher and we moved to Belle Plaine, Kansas, where I lived and attended school until I was 17 years old. My father continued to have bad luck with wives and my mother died of undiagnosed appendicitis when I was six years old. He married again when I was nine years old. I considered her to be a “wicked stepmother” and I left home as soon as I graduated from high school. I graduated as Valedictorian of my small class and qualified fora tuition scholarship to Wichita State where I planned to major in Music Education. The Band Director there was delighted to be getting a bassoon player without wasting a band scholarship. Unfortunately, my college plans did not work out at that time although I knew I would go on to higher education at some point.

I did acquire some secretarial skills in high school so I moved back to Tulsa and went to work for Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. I wound up working for them for eight years with promotions to Fort Worth and then to Lubbock to establish a new District office there. While I was in Fort Worth I met my future husband in the choir at First Methodist Church. He had just graduated from Texas A&M as a commissioned officer and soon had to leave for military service in Korea. The war there had just ended but he spent a year and a half in Seoul helping with the rebuilding and recovery from the war. When he returned to Texas I had moved to Lubbock and met him once again in the choir at First Methodist, Lubbock. We were married on October10, 1959.

Nancy and Bill

When my future husband was born, his father decided to name him after his father-in-law. (This was during the depression, remember? His father-in-law probably paid the hospital.) So he was named Erskine Williams Riveire but was called by a nickname “Bill” until he was fifty years old. So now I had anew name, too, “Nancy and Bill,” but it wasn’t long before I was “Richard’s Mother”, and later “Richard and Charles’ Mother.” I left the Telephone Co. when Richard was born and that seemed like a good time to go back to school. I enrolled at Texas Tech as an English major, and I managed to complete three years of college at Tech before my •husband’s construction business moved us off to cities in West Texas where there was no upper level university (Big Spring and Midland.

During the years that my children were in school I was glad to teach Pre-School so I could be at home with my children when they were there. I also appreciated the early childhood training classes I took so that I could be a better parent than my stepmother! We continued to move around, living in Houston and Bryan and back to Houston. My husband’s last secular work was as a construction consultant in Houston. His work involved making sure what the banks were lending was actually in the ground! Bill was always a man of great integrity and honesty and he really wasn’t very happy with his clients at times. Finally, the day came when he returned from a business trip and told me that God had called him to the ordained ministry! He had always been the very best layperson in any church we attended. He had helped staff a new congregation when we moved back to Houston and found there was no Methodist church in the Jersey Village area where we were living. That became Foundry UMC and they have at least 4,000 members now. At the age of 50 my husband started seminary at Perkins at SMU. He also received his first appointment at the Midway and Elwood churches east of Madisonville. We sold our home in Houston, cashed in his pension, and got rid of most of our furnishings to move into a parsonage. Bill also decided to go back to his baptized name “Erskine.” After 25 years of marriage I had a hard time remembering to say Erskine, so I generally referred to him as “my husband” for the first year.

The Preacher’s Wife

Now l had a new name and a new life. The Bishop and the Cabinet told us where we would be living and the church we would be serving. I believe God had been calling Erskine for a long time but I have to admit I’m glad we weren’t living in a parsonage when we were dealing with teenage rebellion! In 20 years of ministry we served 7 charges and 14 churches and I cried every time we left one to move on. It is a good life. I used to say that the preacher has no Pastor, but that isn’t so. The people of the congregation care for the Pastor and his family in times of need or sorrow just as he/she cares for them. I didn’t know there was so much misery in the world until my husband went into the ministry, but the Church tries hard to heal sorrow and misery.

Who Am I?

After dragging me all over Texas in 45 years of marriage Erskine said I could decide where we lived in retirement. We had served in the Bryan District twice during his Ministry so we still knew quite a few people here. We had lived in Bryan for a couple of years before he became a pastor. My husband was an Aggie, our son Richard was an Aggie, so I picked College Station when he retired in 2003. He already had cancer when he retired and he passed away in 2005.

So, who am I now? I am Grandma to Catherine Anne Riveire who lives in Hollywood, CA, and also to Chase Lee Riveire who resides in Grand Saline in East Texas, but they are both teenagers now and I don’t get to see them too often. Mobility problems that came with age makes it difficult forme to do some things I have always loved. I have told the Choir Director that whenever he thinks I should retire from the Choir I will go. I can still sing, but getting up and down stairs is diffcult. However, he always needs altos so I suspect I will be in the choir until they roll me down the aisle at my funeral. I teach my Sunday School class about once a month, but that is sort of intimidating since there are at least four retired preachers and several retired A&M professors in the group. United Methodist Women keeps me busy as well. I will keep on doing what I can for the Lord although it really does change as time goes by.

God bless you all.. ..