HEART OF STEELE

“You could talk to a lot of people; there are a lot of people you could do this about.”

That’s true – and we will – but we may not run across someone with as many friends as Becky (Trom) Noble, of Blooming Prairie.

She was born and raised there, graduating in 1974.

“My class, we all turn 70 this year,” said Noble – and she’s probably related to most of them.

“I think I had six or seven classmates” who were first or second cousins, she said. “We had big families; my mom and dad both had, like, eight and nine siblings.”

Noble paused, with perfect comedic timing.

“I’m even related to my husband, which I didn’t know until years later, after we were married.”

It’s a very distant relation, she clarified, “like fourth cousins or something.”

She and Mark Noble learned about it in a very public way.

“We had a family reunion on my mom’s side,” Becky said, which involved a significant amount of research on the family tree.

Everyone received a T-shirt, color-coded to the branch of the tree they were from.

“Well, he and I had different colors, and I was like, ‘why wouldn’t we have the same? Why wouldn’t they just give him the color I’ve got, since we’re married, not related?’

“Nope,” Noble said. “He was on that tree, on a different branch.”

She answers an unasked question: “I have no idea how no one knew about it before that.”

The two graduated together from Blooming Prairie High School in 1974; they were crowned Homecoming King and Queen their senior year.

She attended junior college in Austin with five of her high school friends, “but who knew what they wanted to do at that age? I still don’t know what I want to do,” Noble said.

She graduated with a legal certificate, enabling her to be a legal secretary, “but things change, so I ended up in Rochester, because two of my roommates went there with their nursing degrees.”

The Nobles married in 1977 and moved back to Blooming Prairie, where they started their family.

She has never used that legal certificate she earned.

“I’m good at people – and kids,” she said.

Noble stayed home with their kids for about five years, then worked for an oral surgeon in Austin until the next baby came.

She opened an in-home day care, calling it “the hardest job I ever had. I told (parents) that I wasn’t gonna teach their kids much except manners and how to be nice.”

Noble was working at the phone company for Darrell Hanson when she heard Jean Peterson was retiring as the director of the Blooming Prairie Chamber of Commerce.

“Darrell said, ‘you’d be really good at that job. You need to take that job,’ so I went and talked to (Peterson), and she said, ‘sure,’” Noble said.

It was September of 2001; the attacks in New York and Pennsylvania happened as she started her second week of work.

“It just felt like an induction into the Chamber; it was such big news,” Noble said.

Eventually, she became the news – doing a radio bit every weekday morning.

“I would read obituaries, talk about what’s going on in the community, and end it with a joke,” she said. “I loved that part of the job; we were advertising for everybody.”

Jean Peterson had provided good advice, “and I listened to it. I did what she said. She dressed up every day, so I dressed up every day,” Noble said. “She taught me a lot.”

The main goal, she said, “was to just … be a good representative of the community. Everybody wanted to work together. All the business people got along, and they wanted to be a part of the Chamber.

“Everybody at the state Chamber meetings knew where Blooming Prairie was, because we were the home of the Awesome Blossoms, you know?”

Noble retired from the position in 2021; COVID had taken its toll.

She and her committee had to make the call to cancel the Fourth of July, and it was an unpopular decision.

“We couldn’t do it,” she said. “The state fair wasn’t going to happen, either, and everybody was mad because we couldn’t have any of these celebrations.”

Additionally, the bakery and SportsStitch had been destroy in a fire, “and the whole thing just changed.”

One thing that hasn’t changed is Noble’s ability to make friends.

She has a long list: high school friends, bowling friends, card club friends, racing friends, church friends, Legion Auxiliary friends …

“In a small town like Blooming Prairie, you need to join a church, Friends of the Library, Women of Today, American Legion Auxiliary, Cancer Group, Education Foundation…” Noble said, listing off just some of the groups with which she’s been involved – many of them as president.

She’s active at First Lutheran Church in Blooming Prairie, where she taught Sunday school, religion classes and Vacation Bible School.

She was the first president of the Education Foundation Board, and remained on the board for 15 years. Noble is still on the foundation’s auction committee, and has been, for 23 years.

She is the Legion Auxiliary president, “because who can say no to Carol Holman?”

“They’re just such a nice bunch of ladies,” Noble said of the Legion group.

As when she was with the Chamber, “I have a lot of support, a lot of help. They don’t leave you. It’s just a good group: They do good things for the club, and they do good things for fun and they do good things for the veterans.”

Noble also drives a van for kids in the Blooming Prairie School District every morning and afternoon.

“She’s had a positive impact on our community, our school and our students,” said Superintendent Chris Staloch, who also mentioned Noble’s work on the Ed Foundation.

“Blooming Prairie Public Schools is fortunate to have Becky supporting our students,” he said. “We are grateful for all that she has done.”

Noble remains especially close with those five girls she graduated with from BPHS.

“We really had a lot of fun when we were young,” she said. “We really, really did; I mean, the colorful characters …”

They may now be the colorful characters.

As Mary and Pete Kittelson’s 50^th wedding anniversary approached, Noble gathered up several of their friends, “had them all get in our motor home, and tied cans to the back of it.”

The plan was for a nice meal at the Hubbell House with three other couples.

Instead, “we pull up with these cans dragging behind a motor home, with about 14 people inside. We drove by the apartment building on the end of North Main; that was the first place they lived after they were married.”

The Kittelsons had their wedding dance at the BP Country Club, “so we went out there and had a toast and a drink, then we ended up back at our house.

“It was just a fun night, but we always had fun things we did, because when we were all first married, nobody had money. We stayed in town and had 50-cent beers. We did Friday night couples bowling,” Noble said.

Still, she said, “I don’t volunteer as much, but I still bake those cookies every year (for the Ed Foundation auction), and I donate Mark to pick people up and bring them to the auction. He loves people, too, and they love him.

“I couldn’t do any of that volunteering unless I had great people to volunteer with,” Noble said. “I always said somebody kicked me to volunteer, so, OK, I’ll volunteer if you do this with me.

“You can’t feel like a part of the community unless you’re doing something.”