A dad who was no joke

I officiated the funeral of my father last month. When my family arrived in Little Rock from Virginia, we stepped back into summer. It had already dipped into the 40s at night back home, with highs in the upper 60s and 70s. In Arkansas though, it was hot. The 95° heat quickly promised to bake us at the graveside later that afternoon.

I was named after my dad. He was Gayle Linwood Noble. I’m Jeffrey Gayle Noble. I was never a huge fan of “Gayle” as a name. I got teased some about it in school. It was a “girl’s name.” My quick retorts usually included, “Ever hear of a gale force wind?” or, “Yeah, I’m Jeffrey Gayle, the ultimate male.”

My dad never batted an eye about his name. He was proud to simply be Gayle. That was the special thing about my dad. He had no pretensions, no prideful ambition, no real pride to speak of that I saw during my entire 57 years of knowing him as my father. He was comfortable in his own skin, with his own name. I was happy and grateful to be raised by such a father.

Pull my finger

I don’t know what it is about being able to laugh at a fart that makes a person an instant friend, but my dad was not only known for his ability to rip one, but I don’t think he ever heard a fart that he didn’t laugh at. But honestly, he laughed at most everything. He could laugh at himself, my mom, me or my sister with equal humor. It’s one of the main things I associate most with my dad – his laughter.

“A joyful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit dries up the bones.” (Proverbs 17:22)

It was with some surprise and with deep wonder that I learned while I prepared for his funeral that one of my dad’s favorite verses was Nehemiah 8:10 – “the joy of the LORD is your strength.” It is one of mine too. In January 2020, I preached a sermon series on my favorite verses. One of those messages was on Nehemiah 8:10.

It is a huge encouragement to me to realize that I loved the reality of God being a joyful God because my dad did. Some things are better caught than taught, and I’m profoundly grateful that dad’s contagious joy was rooted in his confidence that God is a joyful God.

The stories we heard at his funeral all had one characteristic. Whether he whispered, “Pull my finger” to one of us in the most inappropriate location, or he grossed us out with one of his famous “Wet Willies” (he would lick his finger and then stick it deep into your ear canal), my dad was simply infamous for embracing fun, bizarre and inane. I’m forever grateful for his lightheartedness. It fuels my own love of joyful, carefree living (and of inappropriate, and often ill-timed and immature humor.)

Oh the shows!

We watched all kinds of TV shows together. This was in the days when you’d have to get up and walk over to the TV and manually change the channel. He loved (and so I did too) Ironsides and The Rockford Files. But perhaps our favorite show to watch together was Star Trek. It was my dad that made me a Trekkie. I was proud to be able to wear my Spock socks at his funeral. He would have liked that.

The Reader

Books. Magazines. My blog. My dad loved to read. History – particularly the Civil War and the World Wars – was his favorite subject. He had a huge stack of National Geographic magazines at one point. He loved learning about the world and everything in it.

But it was his love for the Bible that I vividly remember. I’m grateful not only that he read it, but that he wore copies of the Bible out. He was a professional underliner.

My dad’s love for reading was challenging for him physically. As a young man, he developed cataracts and went to Houston, Texas for surgery. As far back as I can remember, however, he had a unique head-bobbing habit. The “floaties” in his eyes sometimes made it difficult for him. Yet he would continue to read, bobbing his head on occasion to be able to see the page clearly. In 2005, he had a horrendous wreck on his way home from work. The damage it caused his eyes not only caused him to not be able to drive anymore, but he found it extremely hard to read for sustained periods of time after that. It was a sad moment for us all when we realized that books were no longer a good gift for birthdays and Father’s Day.

It was a good thing that mugs and t-shirts with fart jokes on them were in endless supply. There was a period of time – and those of you who struggle to know what to give your dad for a gift understand this – that I gave dad t-shirts with just the day of the week on them. I gave him a gray shirt one year that simply said “Sunday.” On the next gift occasion, I gave him a different-colored shirt that proclaimed “Monday.” And so on.

Dementia

My dad was diagnosed with dementia in 2013. My sister and I were oblivious to that. Neither of us can remember being told, and so we never treated dad differently. It wasn’t until the spring and summer of 2022 that it became clear he and my mom needed to transition from their home in Little Rock to an independent living facility.

It was that year that we learned that mom had fallen a few times and that dad had also fallen. It was during that hard and unhappy season that we learned for the first time about dad’s prior diagnosis of dementia. He had begun repeating questions, and those memory loops seemed to grow smaller over the course of the next few years. One ironic thing… Dad had always refused to eat chicken. He claimed he hated it because that’s all he had growing up. In his days in the independent living facility, Mom would order tubs of chicken salad and crackers, and they’d snack on them between meals at the facility. Mom told Dad it was tuna salad. He never knew. We all suspected he was blowing smoke about hating the taste of chicken. Case closed.

In June, we made the deeply hard decision to relocate Dad to a nursing home and down size my mom’s apartment at the independent living facility. When I visited to help with the move, I was grateful to be able to spend some moments with Dad, assuring him of my love and how proud I was to be his son.

We were deeply thankful that up until Jesus called Dad home, he always recognized us. On the Friday before he passed away two days later, my wife Carolyn was in Little Rock to see friends. She stopped by to visit Dad, and that was the first time we became aware that he didn’t recognize someone. Dad struggled to talk, yet he was funny (as usual), and his good spirits prompted Carolyn to record him responding to some questions. Here is the audio of that moment:

Dad’s declaration of faith in Jesus was a deep challenge to me. He was 85, suffering from advanced stages of dementia, and he still understood the call to be a “public Christian.” The week after he died, Charlie Kirk was shot.

I led our church family in a time of prayer the following Sunday, two days after my dad’s funeral, in which I said, “We must speak of Jesus more than we post about social evils, trials and politics. Only Jesus. Post. Proclaim. Comfort. And invite people to know Jesus. May we be public Christians and not be silent about the hope of the world that’s found only in Christ.”

Preparing for a funeral

It’s a strange thing to prepare for a funeral. To condense and congeal a life into pictures, slideshows and words that will do justice, pay tribute, honor and also comfort family, friends and loved ones. That week was a whirlwind. We all began to send pictures, and it was my joy to pull them all together in a slideshow. I smiled over and over with recollections of family memories. And then, it was astonishing to understand that Dad had lived a big life before I ever came on the scene!

Pictures of him as a young man, dating my mom, with a classic Ford Mustang (which I barely remember from when we lived in Louisiana), all helped me see that while I knew my dad, there were large parts of his life I was not present for.

Perhaps one of my favorite pictures is this one of me receiving the Governor’s Scholarship from Governor Bill Clinton. There are two things you’ll quickly notice. Dad was fascinated with Hillary, and Mom was inordinately happy to be standing next to Bill. In fact, several folks over the years have been surprised for me to point out that I was supposed to be one being honored in that picture! No one remembers me being in the shot at all, due to my parents’ reactions.

Bubbles of grief and joy

With the busyness of funeral prep and reentry into a nonstop life of active ministry and pastoring, I am discovering what so many of you know well. You don’t just grieve in a moment. Grief is like a long drive. There are moments of beauty where you’re thankful for the views, and there are moments where you simply keep your eyes glued to the road, wanting to get to the next point. There have been a few moments that snuck up on me.

I was washing dishes after a big meal the other evening. As I stood there, scrubbing a pot, it hit me. I was the last Noble dishwasher standing. My grandfather, my dad, and me all took upon ourselves the honorable chore of dishwashing. (To date, my son has not taken up that heritage, but there’s still time.) Tears welled up, and though I felt silly for it in the moment, I embraced the memory of my dad cleaning up the kitchen after my mom had made a big meal.

The other quiet chore that Dad took upon himself was prayer. Mom sent me this picture and assured me that my dad prayed for me, my ministry and our church regularly. I’ve got it framed now. I’m confident that I’ve experienced manifold graces of God in response to my father’s persistent and passionate prayers.

As I mentioned in my message to the family at Dad’s funeral, ¹ I am joyfully confident that my Dad stepped into paradise with a joyfully surprised and hopeful smile early on Monday, September 8.

He was welcome by our Savior Jesus with open arms. In one moment, all his hopes, dreams, ideas and expectations – all his faith – became vivid sight. No head bobbing was needed to see clearly the wonders of that place that Jesus had prepared for him.

It may have been later that day in that heavenly city, after happy reunions with his parents, brother, friends and others that Dad began to settle in and revel in his new, forever, resurrection body – unimpeded with age, memory lapses or health issues. Soon after that, I think, was his first wry chuckle, when upon meeting the apostle Peter for the first time, Dad uttered his famous phrase, “Hey Peter, pull my finger.”

Obituary

Gayle Linwood Noble, ² 85, of Little Rock, Arkansas, went home to be with his Lord and Savior on September 8, 2025, after a long journey with dementia. He was born on August 31, 1940, in Bastrop, Louisiana, to Harry E.H. (Yates) Noble and Opal Elizabeth Upshaw Noble.

Gayle grew up in Bastrop and Hamburg, Arkansas, where he graduated with honors from Hamburg High School. He continued his studies at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway and earned a fellowship to Oklahoma State University in Stillwater. He taught history at Lawton Junior College before beginning a long career as an insurance adjustor. His work often took him into the aftermath of hurricanes and across the highways of America, where he specialized in investigating big truck accidents.

On July 31, 1964, Gayle married Marylee Smith, at Trinity Baptist Church in El Dorado, Arkansas, where her father, Pastor Chuck Smith, officiated. Together they built a marriage of 61 years of faithfulness. They lived in Owensboro, Kentucky; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Lafayette, LA, before they settled and lived in Little Rock for 55 years.

Gayle and Marylee were blessed with two children. Jeff Noble (born January 5, 1968) who is married to Carolyn. Jeff and Carolyn have two children: Samuel Noble (married to Sidney, with their son John Shepherd, born October 30, 2023) and Adelyn Wallace (married to Braeden). Gayle’s daughter, Amy (born July 7, 1972) is married to Casey Huie. Gayle was deeply grateful and prayed regularly for his children, their families, and his nieces and nephews. He is survived by his sister, Imie Carpenter. He was preceded in death by his brother, Harry Noble, Jr.

A man of deep faith, Gayle was an active member of Southern Baptist churches throughout his life. He was a staff member at Olivet Baptist Church in Little Rock as Minister of Education, a long-time member of Immanuel Baptist Church in Little Rock, and in later years a faithful online worshiper at his son Jeff’s church, Northstar Church in Blacksburg, Virginia. He was known as a professional potluck eater, and even more as a man who loved the Lord and loved people.

Gayle’s passions included cheering on the Arkansas Razorbacks, reading history (especially the Civil War and World Wars I & II), and never missing the comics in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. His humor was legendary—he was quick with a joke and never minded laughing at himself. His family fondly remembers him as a “great farter, we mean father,” and as someone who mowed the yard with his trademark red bandanna tied around his head. Gayle enjoyed the occasional Coors Light but later switched to Stella Artois because it sounded more refined. He rejoiced in the goings-on of his children and faithfully encouraged and reminded Marylee of her beauty until he was called home to heaven.

The family expresses heartfelt gratitude to Gayle’s caregivers and hospice team for their loving care.

Gayle’s life was marked by faith, laughter, and love. As his family rests in the hope of Christ, they cling to the promise of John 11:25–26:

Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me, even if he dies, will live. Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”

1. You can read my notes and text of Dad’s funeral message here.[↩]
2. You can also see his obituary here and leave comments, memories.[↩]