Clifford Noll, was born in 1926 in New Jersey and died Colorado in January 2024. Cliff made the most of his life and died gracefully among family, living to be 97.

During his early years, his father packaged milk from local dairies and Cliff and his father delivered the milk to the doorsteps of local families using a horse-drawn wagon.

Through high school, Cliff found a set of good friends and teachers who encouraged him to continue his education beyond high school. None of his family members had ever attended college and much less graduated.

Cliff was a World War Two veteran, training as a B-17 navigator in the US Army Air Corp. After the war, he remembered his teachers and friends and applied to college with plans to study engineering. He graduated in 1949 with a degree in mechanical engineering. Cliff declined an offer to continue his studies at Columbia noting that, after the war, many of the veterans "just wanted to get on with their lives."

While at college, Cliff met and married Muriel , a fine New England woman. Cliff and Muriel enjoyed life together as partners until his death. They were married for 73  years. They supported each other's ideas and interest while relocating from the East Coast to the Midwest and then on to Colorado where they lived most of their lives.

Together, Cliff and Muriel raised a family of four sons, three grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren. He was very proud that all of his sons and grandchildren found their different ways in the world and found their different measures of success.

Cliff was employed by a global engineering company, opening a Colorado office in the early 1960s. He retired from an executive position in the 1990s. His work took him all through the US as well as to Europe and Australia. Cliff formed a common bond with many of his coworkers and clients based on their shared WWII experiences and it no longer mattered to him whether they had been allies or adversaries.

Besides engineering, Cliff repaired and refurnished a wide variety of mechanical items and home appliances. There were cars and trucks in various states of repair that his four sons acquired, but he also refurbished an antique German cuckoo clock and an antique foot-pedal operated player piano. Both the clock and the piano were major projects. Cliff could be meticulous about small machines and mechanical devices.

With his four sons, he built a wide range of projects. Two early projects were model railroads and gas-powered model airplanes. He later watched while some of the model airplanes crashed.  He celebrated success and soothed the disappointment of failures.

He loved kids and volunteered as a scout leader. The dads in the local boy scout troop included WWII veterans from the Navy, Air Force, and many from the Army's famed 10th Mountain Division. One active dad in the troop had been a captured German U-boat sailor. The German sailor was fully accepted among the troop's fathers, giving us all a very powerful lesson in forgiveness.

Cliff lived a varied life as an engineer, as an executive, as a father, as a partner in marriage, as well as learning to ski with his children, bicycling across New Jersey as a kid, canoeing in the Boundary Waters as a scout leader, and restoring a small mountain cabin. He was passionate about natural areas and supported preserving wild lands and local communities through land trusts and other measures.

Cliff's life can be understood through a story. His remarked about old people who often exclaim that they have lived a good life and "wouldn't change a thing in their lives." His private response was "well, didn't they learn anything?" He learned a great deal in his life and endeavored to pass that learning and passion for learning to others. Cliff lived a full life, he made a positive difference, and he will be missed by all who knew him.

A private service will be held.

Cliff was a life-long reader. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in his honor to the Estes Valley Public Library, 335 East Elkhorn Avenue, Estes Park, CO 80517, or online at https://www.coloradogives.org/donate/EstesValleyLibrary.