Joe Nold was the founding School Director of the Colorado Outward Bound School. In his time in Marble, he made a great impact on many young people on the first Outward Bound courses in the US. His legacy lives on through these students and the influence they in turn have had on others. Below are a few comments we received in response to the news of Joe’s death last week.
I met Joe Nold in 1962 when I was 16 years old and sent to COBS by the Jefferson Park Boys Club of New York in East Harlem. That initial encounter with Joe, my instructor on C-2, was chronicled in the book Outward Bound U.S.A., Learning Through Experience in Adventure-Based Education by Joe Bold and Josh Miner.
One incident that wasn’t talked about in the book involved a heated verbal confrontation I had with an older, 18 year old student in our patrol while we were climbing Capital Mountain. In short, the patrol had split into two groups: A contingent of six self-selected volunteers who were considered more physically fit and self-confident, were going to separate and climb to the summit of Capital with Joe and his assistant instructor leading; the second group, which I was part of, was going to retraced their steps across a long, rocky trail back to a mini base camp. I got into this heated argument with the bully and separated from the second group. In retrospect, a super dangerous, knucklehead move on my part? No question that I was inviting disaster! When Joe and the first group came back down from their trek to the peak of Capital, they found me fast asleep between a pile of rocks where the two groups had split apart an hour and change earlier.
When our patrol arrived back to the COBS main base camp in Marble maybe two days later, I was summoned the following morning by the director to his office. Of course he admonished me for my juvenile and profoundly dangerous antics out in the rocky wilderness. He then told me that there were serious discussions being had about sending me back home to NYC, East Harlem. At that point, I think we were halfway through the 26 day course. It would have been quite easy for Joe and the school administration, because of what had happened on Capital to have given up on me. However, it turned out that luck was with me and I made it through the rest of the experience without another foolish incident. But everyone who was on C-2 knew I wasn’t about to back down or away from anyone, even at 14 thousand feet in the middle of nowhere. I had taken the Rules of The ‘Hood to COBS and lived to tell all my homeboys about it.
Fast forward to 1975 and I was the Director-in-Residence at Great Hollow Wilderness School in New Fairfield, Connecticut, as well as teaching at an alternative high school in East Harlem, Park East High School. I met up with Joe who had come East to visit OB brass about the creation of an urban outdoor/Outward Bound program. Joe told me, “What you’re doing at Great Hollow Wilderness School is great! But you’re always going to work for a White man if you don’t get a college education,” or something like the aforementioned. He then put me in contact with Ellie Greenberg who oversaw the University Without Walls Program at Loretto Heights College in Denver, Colorado, which helped me look at the world from a whole different perspective, starting day one upon my arrival when I read John Hope Franklin’s “From Slavery to Freedom”.
Give a man a piece of fish and he’ll happily fill his gut for a single meal. Teach him how to fish and he’ll be able to feed himself and his family for a lifetime. That single aforementioned statement from Joe Nold has taken me from The ‘Hood to Brookline, MA., which the Boston Globe newspaper recently described as being “One of the most desirable communities in America to live”. Damn the economic and material rewards of the journey I’ve been on. Joe’s advice to me in ’75 has multiplied 100 times over with the social and political justice initiatives I’ve devoted the last forty years of my life to. I’ll bet a “Fat Man” as my late Uncle Bebo would say, that I’d have drowned in ignorance and stupidity had I not been given that small but incredibly valuable piece of advice from Joe. Let me leave those who read this with the statement I’ve included in the campaign literature I’ve recently disseminated throughout my precinct in Brookline where I’m running for a seat in Town Meeting:
I have a commitment to humanity, inspired by the vision and work of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as well as a desire to serve this community and make it work for everyone, regardless of color, nationality, creed or economic standing. I want everyone living here to have a good life, and access to a decent, well-paying job. I want all children who attend the Public Schools of Brookline to have an excellent education and to feel safe. And I also want everyone in this community to be treated equally under the eyes of the law.
May Joe Nold Rest In Peace!
Truth/Justice,
Arthur Conquest III
I am sorry to read this. I met Joe several times at different functions. He seemed to be interested in former students and what happened with them. He was an inspiration, daunting, and relentless in his insistence on excellence through simplicity. Bob England
I am sorry to hear of the passing of Joe Nold. I want to share these two photos from July 1966 (C-17 I believe) where he made a life-long impression on a seventeen-year-old kid from Michigan. My condolences to his family and friends. I can still hear him reading Thoreau.
Tom Wood
Denver, Colorado
I do remember Joe well. He hired me in January, 1969 and I worked as the Director of Development and as an instructor for the first COBS Teacher practicum, 2-3 business men courses, numerous fund raising river trips and one of the first Catarac Canyon ten day courses. One of the many quotes from Joe that comes back to me is: “The greatest adventures are not in the out fo doors, but in your mind.” I left COBS in 1972 to go to graduate school and the next year helped organize a joint COBS and East Africa Outward Bound course at Loitokitok on the slopes of Kilimanjaro.
Cheers,
Craig
So sorry to hear another COBS legend has passed.
L to R: Chuck Froelicher, Jess Bell, Bill Coors, and Joe Nold (from the Colorado Academy archives)
Sue Burleigh
One of my sisters had sent me an article from Reader’s Digest on Kurt Hahn in the fall of 1965. I mustered out of the Army (stationed in Alaska) in late January 1966. I had written a letter (no email, no phone) to Joe to see if I could meet him and interview for a job on my way back east. It was a good meeting! He offered me a job for summer of 1966.Then, shortly after arriving at my destination back in New England (Perry!), Joe called and asked if I could come out to Collbran, CO, in late March to work on a leadership training effort at a Job Corps center there for a month. I said of course. I mean, what better way to spend your honeymoon??
Vic Walsh, Bob Pieh, Joe, and I worked this contract. The Director of that Job Corps Center was Murray Durst!
And so it began for me. Followed by a variety of other interesting new ventures: first Educators course, urban and suburban kids in Mexico for six weeks, first CO girls course, Prescott College orientation, etc. Joe was creative!
A happy moment on the Mediterranean after Joe had retired. He and Mary invited Perry and me to sail with them!
Perry, Mary, and Joe. A happy month!
Here is one of Joe with Geneva Basin in back that I took in 1966,
Me (in center) and Bob Pieh (MOBS Director) on right.
Jed Williamson
About the Author
I was a member of the first COBS Teachers course in the summer of 1968, along with my husband. The marriage didn’t last, but the effect on my life is still intact. Joe Nold was part of that, as well as the instructors on our small, mostly inexperienced motley crew of 6 women and quite a few more men. We hiked the Gore Range, sailed Dillon Reservoir, paddled the Gates of Lodore, soloed for 3 days, and hiked some more. My life was totally changed by the experience. I became a teacher in Jeffco schools, organized a 9th grade raft trip experience for students at Evergreen Junior High with COBS’ help, and have used what I learned on OB ever since. I’m still not crazy about rappelling, but at least I survived! Such a good experience!
I first met Joe Nold in July ’68 when he interviewed me for a postion as an instructor on the first girls’ course.
As I have heard the story a few times, (told by May Coors, the “sherpa” who was there, and by Chris George, leader of the “rescue”, as a well as by a few other “observers”), East High had run a girls’ OB course in the summer of ’67 using COBS for technical support. The instructors were East High teachers with hiking experience but not experienced moutaineers. There were some serious problems and the COBS staff rescued the group from the disaster.
In ’68 COBS decided to run a girls’ course. With some obvious trepidation, they began to look for female instructors. Jed Wiliamson was the Course Director, and his lovely wife Perry the instructor, but they needed another female instructor. Someone knew someone who knew me. I got hired: I suppose I was the best of many worst-possible candiates. COBS was actively concerned about girls remaining feminine while spending a month in the wilderness (and in 1969, concerned that girls become assertive, not aggressive), where as my perspective was that when tensions arose among girls, one dragged them up a few 14–ers, drank whatever Wylers was left, and then, if so motivated, talked about whatever it was that had been the problem many hours before. Always worked for me – still doesn’t have a good outcome if I say what I think at the time….
So I came to COBS. I worked for COBS on girls courses 1968-1971, then in ’72 on coed courses. The girls’ course in ’68 was based out of Mable, and we climbed Mt Sopris. All 12,965′ of it. In 1969 and ’70, we were based out of Vernal, Utah, climbed in the Uintas, (which I saw as 2nd class to the mountains the boys got, but which today I realize were wild and beautiful and very free). In ’71, we were in the West Elks, which again I saw as 2nd class and which, again today, I realize were wild, beautiful and very free. By then the girls’ courses were in their prime or perhaps had peaked, and the summer of ’72 I was assigned to the co-ed courses in the San Juans. Which were fun, I had a great time. But I was a bit lost upon finding that girls were no longer separate and didn’t have to prove themselves equal.
Over those five years, I would encounter Joe Nold once or twice a year (I was rarely in Marble), and didn’t know him well. But I knew the people he had hired: Jed and Perry Williimason, Terry Burnell, Dezie Hadlum, Bob Godfrey, Bob Hopewell, Pat Billig, George McLeod, (Ann) Forrest Ketchan, Gary Zeigler, Leslie Emerson, Maggie Fox, John Evans. The famous Betty Austin. I could keep typing the names until the blog expires. These extraordinary people would influence the way I thought about many things for rest of my life.
l came back to COBS the summer of ’76 for the COBS-CU M.Ed. program, and Joe Nold led our class of 12. That was an extraordinary summer in Marble, winter in Boulder (and some of us went to Mexico and the Andes in January). The summer is written up in Joe’s book, the tragic chapter about Marg Millspaugh. That was the year I got to know Joe Nold. I saw him every day, for 2 or 4 or 8 or 12 hours every day. All summer. Although I’d known him for years, that summer of ’76, I watched him work. He was enormously skilled. He had a huge vision, a magnetic touch, he brought out people’s strength, and he handled crisis with enormous competance and skill.
When it I look back on it all, I’m astonished at the direct and indirect influence Joe Nold had my life. From John Amesse to Marg Millspaugh. From Kino Bay to the Canyon of Lodore. The Elks, West Elks, San Juans, the Unitas, Cataract Canyon the Gore Range one winter. Manpower courses. Teacher’s courses. A Coors course deaing with employee racial issues. I’ve had a benficial influence on a few people in my life, and from time to time, I’ve tried to to reach out to others the way Joe Nold’s COBS reached out to me. But I could never, ever influence 1000’s of peope the way Joe Nold did. And did for greatest good.
Susan Rogers Livenick
aka Susie Rogers, COBS ’68-’76
Durango CO
Joe hiked out from Marble to meet our group of educators in a June 1978 Educators course. We met again when I was on staff at Thompson Island Outward Bound and urban Outward Bound was in full gear. Joe was part of that movement. He was a steady voice and historian whose questions made us all dig a little deeper as we debated course length (“Is a 1-day course a true Outward Bound experience?”) and what it meant to create a wilderness experience in a cityscape. Joe’s contributions transmitting the essence of Outward Bound to urban centers across the country and to Expeditionary Learning, now a well-established school curriculum.
We become closer as he transitioned from OB to new adventures, namely a seafaring life where he sailed Zillah across the Atlantic, around the Med and back with Mary Moore. How amazing at 65 to decide one is going to sea!
Joe was a writer–and when he and Mary moved out to the West Coast, he joined a writer’s group and published his memoir, Shreds and Patches. If you had an adventure with Joe, you are part of this wonderful collection of tales. It’s on Amazon.com
Helen Russell
COBS 78, HIOBS 85-88, TIOBEC 90-96
I just came across this news inadvertently, and am sorry to learn so late of Joe’s death. I participated in his masters program at Boulder back in 1976. We made a lovely connection, and he was most helpful to me and encouraging of my endeavours. Later we once went cruising together on a leaky old schooner I chartered in Maine. I have often thought of him and remember him with real fondness. He left his mark on experiential education and touched so many of us thereby.
I am a charter member of COB, I was part of the 1973, Journey to the outer limits film. I was the one who could not make the summit.
I am planing to do a climb of Cerro Santa Rosa
as a 50 year anniversary climb. Can you get me in touch with Terry Burnell?
Hi John,
I was also one of the students on the COBS ’73 “Journey to the Outer Limits” documentary. I am in contact with Terry. Let’s take this offline. Email me at [email protected].
Mark