She spent the next two years as executive assistant to the head of a New York City non-profit organization that sponsored international teacher and student exchanges. In April 1957 she accepted my unexpected invitation to a dance in Cambridge, MA. We got engaged shortly after I graduated from Harvard Law School that May, and were married in the Andover chapel that October.

Following an idyllic fall honeymoon in Vermont, we moved to Washington, DC where Noëlle worked for several years as principal assistant to the director of a non-profit think tank that facilitated testimony by private-sector experts at Congressional hearings on foreign-policy matters. During the 1960s, in the midst of nurturing our three children, Eric, Ned, and Julia, she earned a graduate degree in editing from American University in DC and launched a successful career as both a copy editor and a content editor.

In the busy decades that followed, she somehow found time to write three books herself: the first was a text book on the history, geography, economy, and people of Suriname; the second was a detailed description of the origin and layout of the Dumbarton Oaks Gardens in DC; and the third was entitled Literary Byways of Boston and Cambridge. The latter was a witty, informative guidebook to sites in those cities where noted literary figures had lived or worked, often with appropriate quotes from their works. More than 10,000 copies of the book have been sold since it was published in 1991. 

Until her mid-70s Noëlle was also an accomplished singer. As a soprano in the Harvard-Radcliffe Glee Club she toured the U.S. and after we settled in DC she sang for several decades with the National Cathedral Chorus, both in the cathedral and in secular venues. The highlight of her musical career was singing Ode to Joy from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony before a huge outdoor audience in Warsaw’s Old Town Square.

For many years Noëlle anchored our relationship with friends and neighbors in the Cleveland Park area of DC. She was a superb cook who produced exceptional meals for small dinner parties in our home and mouthwatering rustic ones when we took weekend excursions with our children to our unelectrified cabin in West Virginia. She also masterminded the annual beach weeks that later brought our three children and nine grandchildren together at Bethany Beach on the Delaware shore.

After I retired from law practice in 1987, Noëlle played a major role in planning trips that took us abroad each year. She had long been a collector of antique pottery and decided to become a dealer in old French faience. For the next twenty-five years she took us to France once (or sometimes twice) each year to acquire inventory, which she then sold at East Coast antique fairs or on her website. Her business succeeded on all counts. We had a great time hunting for exceptional pieces of pottery throughout France, we ate extremely well en route, we developed enjoyable relationships with a number of her U.S. clients, and every tax return we filed during that period reported a net profit from the business.

Over time, our foreign travels took us to fifty-one other countries. Noëlle’s photographs and written accounts of many of those trips constitute a substantial bequest to our children and grandchildren.

When we reached our 80s and began to think about retirement communities, our Denver-based daughter scouted Balfour while it was still under construction and urged us to move here, which we did in October 2014 shortly after the building opened. Moving here when we did has proved to be one of the best decisions we ever made.   

In recent years, as she became aware that dementia was compromising her life, Noëlle remained her essential sweet self despite all the frustrations she faced. I loved her dearly and will miss her greatly.

                                                                                                                        G.W.B.

                                                                                                                        August 30, 2022