Susan Noack, the tireless advocate for senior citizens who once spearheaded a campaign to keep Tualatin’s downtown post office walkable, wrote a monthly column on aging in place for Tualatin Life, and collaborated across the community to ensure older adults and young children had access to meals and services, died Aug. 31 of cancer in hospice care. She was 81.
Friends remember her as a woman whose style reflected her indomitable spirit, easily recognizable by her spiky, maroon hair with a shock of white in the front, and her bold, signature red attire.
Despite her flair, Noack kept her lens on issues that drove her extensive volunteerism.
“I advocate for seniors who can’t always speak for themselves,” she once told Tualatin Life. “I don’t want the spotlight. I want others to speak, I really do. But if they won’t, I will.”
Cheyrl Laird, who became close to Noack while the women worked together at the Tualatin Chamber of Commerce and helped care for Noack at the end of her life, echoed the sentiment.
“She wanted to make sure whatever she was focused on received the attention, not her,” Laird said.
And her focuses were many.
Born June 11, 1945, in Charlottesville, Va., to Edna and Mac Cohen, Noack once credited her father’s ongoing community involvement for inspiring her own. As a girl, she cultivated a love of drawing and once wrote letters to director Cecil B. DeMille and President Dwight Eisenhower, who each replied.
She earned an undergraduate degree in Art from the University of Texas before settling in California, where she met her former husband, started a family, and began her career. The couple and their two children, Lindsay and Andy Noack, relocated to Lake Oswego in 1989, Andy recalled. There she worked on political campaigns, helmed the city’s Festival of the Arts, and focused the final years of her professional life on multiple children’s charities, Andy said.
She moved to Tualatin from Lake Oswego in 2001 after retiring from a 45-year career as a fundraiser and event planner, board development and strategic planning. She later deployed those skills extensively in her new community.
Noack’s post-retirement volunteerism began at the Juanita Pohl Center, where she eventually joined the advisory board. It grew into a string of long stints with the Aging Task Force, Meals on Wheels People, Tualatin Chamber of Commerce, MITCH Charter School, political campaign management, and penning Tualatin Life’s regular Aging in Place column.
She served as the chair or staff director on more than a dozen boards, keeping her unblinking focus on equity and services. She brought Meals on Wheels People into the Chamber of Commerce, then represented the organization there for more than a decade and sat on its board.
Along the way, she cultivated deep friendships with her colleagues.
“She was a Spitfire. She was passionate about the causes that she really believed in, and she wouldn’t back down. She would not be intimidated,” Laird said. That determination led former Chamber CEO Anneleah Jaxen to nickname Noack “The General,” describing her as an indispensable right-hand lady.
“There’s an old African saying that when an old (person) dies, a library burns,” Jaxen said. “When Susan died, a library burned. She knew a lot of (the city’s) history. She was part of making it.”
Notably, Noack put her fire, focus, and leadership into a 2016 campaign to derail a proposed move that would have relocated the U.S. Postal Service’s main Tualatin branch from 19190 S.W. 90th Ave. to a more remote, unwalkable location.
She and the Aging Task Force gathered hundreds of signatures, persuading the Postal Service to abandon its plan.
“She beat the U.S. Post Office,” said Linda Molholt. “Who does that? People like Susan.”
In another effort, Noack and the Task Force lobbied TriMet to reroute a proposed transit line that would have leveled popular senior gathering spot, the Village Inn. Though the restaurant later became a COVID casualty, Metro changed course to keep it standing.
Friends who gathered at Brix Tavern for a Celebration of Life last month wore Noack’s signature red, sharing stories of a woman whose legacy will live on through the impact she made and the mentees who continue her work.
They described her as complex, a woman who could be alternately graceful and harsh, passionate, wise, intelligent, informed, inclusive, quick to form friendships, eager to energize others, direct, confident, and unflinchingly real.
“She was a king-maker. She brought others along on her journey,” said Ben Richardson, crediting Meals on Wheels People’s Amanda Ballard with granting the nickname. He, Ballard, and Bev Forsman, who wrote Tualatin Life’s Aging in Place column with Noack, credit her as a mentor who drew them in and ignited their advocacy work.
Though Noack’s “tagline” was “If it’s good for seniors, it’s good for our community,” she worked equally hard for the young students at MITCH Charter School. There, Noack employed what MITCH Board Chair Sarah Parker called “The Susan Effect,” leading efforts to replace the school’s playground turf and to establish daily meal service.
After stepping back from most of her volunteer roles in 2024, Noack “softened” and developed close bonds with her beloved Coffee Ladies group, her friends say.
She suffered a series of illnesses in her final year, including a partial leg amputation last March after complications of diabetes impeded her circulation. She was in the process of being fitted for a prosthetic leg when she was diagnosed with cancer last July.
In her final outing, Laird recalled, Noack harnessed her hallmark tenacity to stand on the new leg for the first and last time.
Contributions in Noack’s memory can be made to Meals on Wheels People, any of the organizations she championed, or Tualatin Aging Task Force’s fundraising campaign to install a memorial bench in her honor.
To contribute to the campaign to install a memorial bench in Susan’s honor, visit gofund.me/b8aa0a799
