Russ Noble, 89, beloved for hospitality

When Leonard Russell Noble started working at Seattle's Washington Athletic Club as chief clerk in 1947, the private club barred membership to Jews, African Americans and women.

Over the next 30 years, as Mr. Noble rose to the position of general manager, he opened the club to members of any race, gender and religion.

"He was a very fine example of a good American, very conscientious and moral person," said Herb Bridge, a Seattle businessman who worked with Mr. Noble as a board member and club president in the 1970s.

Mr. Noble, known to friends and family as Russ, died of heart failure Friday at Faerland Terrace, an assisted-living facility in Seattle. He was 89.

Seattle was Mr. Noble's last stop in a career in the hospitality industry that began in Toronto.

He grew up in Picton, Ontario, into a family of eight children. His father was a cheesemaker and owned two farms. In an unpublished memoir, Mr. Noble wrote that he and his sister would collect eggs from 1,000 hens every morning before school. During the winter, he earned $3 a month going to school early to light a fire and tramp down snow for students.

The Depression wiped out the family — they lost the two farms, the cheese factory and a town house in the city. "I remember the bankers coming and kicking us out of our #1 home," Mr. Noble wrote.

His father eventually found work as a police officer, and Mr. Noble remembered spending three nights with his dad and a group of officers in Windsor, Ontario, trying to catch Al Capone smuggle whiskey into Canada from Detroit. They never caught him.

Mr. Noble dropped out of high school in Gananoque, Ontario, in 1930 and worked at a milk company. The family moved often, and he spent one winter working in a slate quarry in Madoc, Ontario, "swinging an 8-pound sledge hammer all day for $12.50 a week."

"I thought I would die or freeze to death," he wrote.

Eventually, he got a job as an elevator operator in Toronto, which led to hotel jobs in Banff and at the Empress Hotel in Victoria, B.C. He told his children he once chased a bear into the pool at the Banff hotel.

He enlisted in the Canadian Scottish Regiment during World War II, and served in Alaska, Calgary and Quebec.

In 1947 he came to Seattle to become chief clerk at the Washington Athletic Club (WAC), met and married Mona Dolena Martyn, a lab technician and microbiologist. They settled on Queen Anne Hill, where they raised three children.

Mr. Noble worked his way up at the WAC, then moved to Spokane in 1963 to manage the Spokane City Club. He returned to Seattle three years later as general manager of the WAC, retiring as chief executive officer in 1979, the same year he served as King Neptune at Seafair. The WAC named a room for him.

"He was a very warm kind of person. Even though he ran the club, he had the kind of personality a maitre d' might have," said Bridge.

After retiring, Mr. Noble started a travel company that took group and golf trips around the world. He and his wife visited 125 countries. She died two years ago.

At the age of 83, he and a friend won the all-ages golf tournament at the Seattle Golf Club. He spent his last few years at Faerland Terrace, where he was known for his travel slide shows.

"He was delightful and absolutely the most resilient and persistent human being around," said Tyrone Noble Townsend, his daughter. She said her father treated people warmly "whether they were a janitor or a CEO."

Besides his daughter and her husband, Hubie Townsend, Mr. Noble is survived by another daughter, Carol Jean Croff, and her husband, Stan Croff, grandsons Stuart and Mark Croff, and son and King County Assessor Scott Noble and partner Joan Cahill. The family is planning a memorial service.

Sharon Pian Chan: 206-464-2958 or schan@seattletimes.com