Craig A. Noll

Craig A. Noll, 78, of North Kingstown, passed away on Saturday, September 3, 2022, at Kent Hospital in Warwick, RI. He was the devoted husband of Anne Marit (Gundersen) Noll for 55 memorable years.
Craig was born on October 9, 1943, in Davenport, Iowa, to the late Francis and Evelyn (Hummel) Noll. He studied anthropology at Wheaton College, Illinois, where he also met his wife. In 1974, Craig and Anne moved to Rhode Island, where they raised their three children, and he became an enthusiastic New Englander. He loved Del's Lemonade, eating fish and chips while watching the Block Island ferry at Galilee, visiting Beavertail State Park to watch the ocean waves, and taking long Sunday drives through the beautiful woods of western Rhode Island, ideally to visit an apple orchard and buy doughnuts. An old-fashioned baseball fan who kept score at games and was always ready with a statistics-inspired observation, he became an avid Red Sox fan and also enjoyed watching Pawsox games at McCoy Stadium with the family. He was very proud of his children and grandchildren, whose adventures and accomplishments he shared with the world in Anne's annually handmade Christmas card.
Craig enthusiastically embraced the role of grandfather. His three grandchildren affectionately call him "Baba," a Turkish word for father, and they loved visiting, playing games, badminton, and croquet with him and joining him in making his traditional Saturday-night homemade pizza. His grandson, Kristian, has the honor of teaching "Baba" to cook with a spirit of adventure, and his granddaughter Karina was a faithful partner in all his baking ventures, badminton matches, and office organization. All the children loved being read to by him. From his boyhood on, Craig had enjoyed the challenge of playing board games and was an expert player of chess, Clue, Scrabble, Boggle, and recently Rummikub. He also happily joined with his children and grandchildren to wrestle, play tennis, badminton, kickball, wiffleball, and tetherball. In his latter years, he enjoyed participating in the family fantasy football league, of which he was a two-time champion.
Outside of his family, Craig was a man of widespread loves and interests that he pursued with passion all of his life. He had an unquenchable, energetic enthusiasm for all that interested him, and was almost childlike in his unfettered excitement and optimism. This insistently positive outlook was coupled with intellectual curiosity and a generous dose of humility.
Faith in Jesus and dedication to the church was his primary focus outside of his family, and studying and teaching the Bible were lifelong pursuits. He was an active member in several churches, including Quidnessett Baptist Church, Exeter Chapel, and various house churches, including one where he served as pastor. Craig was currently one of the three leading elders at New Covenant Church in North Attleboro, MA. For his fellow church goers, Craig was a teacher, preacher and sought-out advisor, with his willingness to listen and biblical knowledge. He kept in frequent contact with a wide network of church members, missionaries, friends, and pastors throughout the state, country, and world.
Craig was a gifted linguist, and love of languages marked most of his adult life. After meeting his wife, Anne, on a blind date at Wheaton College, he was immediately intrigued by her Norwegian background as well as her piano playing and enjoyment of classical music. His Wheaton years were followed by two years in the Peace Corps in Erzurum, Turkey (1965-67), where he learned Turkish and taught English. After marrying Anne, he received his PhD in linguistics from Indiana University (1973) and continued to pursue language study with gusto throughout his life, learning Norwegian to speak with his wife's relatives, using Turkish on any occasion he could find, dabbling in Russian to visit Sonja in Moscow, in Korean to visit George and Kim Marie and family in Seoul, also in Spanish and German and Hebrew and so many more, both for fun and for his career. His true linguistic love was biblical Greek and he remained engaged in Greek study and teaching for all of his life, recently concluding an online course with a few dozen members interested in learning New Testament Greek. Craig had an ongoing interest in the difficulty of translating certain middle voice verbs and had begun an in-depth semantic study of a set of middle and passive verbs in order to try to determine a pattern in their meaning and usage. Craig used his linguistic skills in his successful career with Eerdmans Publishing Company (Grand Rapids, Michigan) as an editor of academic books and journals, publishing The Concise Dictionary of Christianity in America as one of the main editors in 1995, a book that earned the 1996 Book Award Winners from Christianity Today. He also worked with great enjoyment until his death as an editor for the International Bulletin of Mission Research of the Overseas Ministries Study Center.
Craig was an exceptionally talented pianist and a musician with perfect pitch. He would often identify which note a singer had hit, and he was incapable of listening to music he loved without humming along in harmony. As a child, he taught himself to play pieces he had heard once and liked, and he soon became very accomplished, able to play along with almost any hymn and invent elaborate flourishes on the spot, and he was able to accompany almost anyone on anything. He directed impromptu orchestra concerts with his grandchildren, and often played with his daughter Sonja on the flute and his son Christian on the French horn, also accompanying his granddaughter Linnea with her singing, which ranged from playing a Norwegian song at her confirmation to teaching her an Italian piece for her college choir. He and Anne sang and memorized numerous hymns on their long drives together, in both English and Norwegian. He enjoyed tackling particularly challenging piano pieces and loved all sorts of classical music: from British evensong to Bach, Mendelssohn, Grieg, even Poulenc and Fauré. He played the piano wherever there was one to be found: in church and at home, often offering his family impromptu concerts in the evenings and especially on Sundays before church. Every Easter morning began with an exuberant rendition of "Christ the Lord is Risen Today". He had also memorized many classical pieces, including those he had carefully selected for each of his grandchildren, which he chose to suit each of their personalities in a fitting and touching way. He performed annual concerts of Norwegian music at the local Sons of Norway gatherings, into which he invested enormous amounts of planning and research.
Craig was a generous, humble, enthusiastic, and caring man, appreciated and missed by his wife Anne and all their family: George Noll and his wife Kim Marie Knudsen, currently living in Jerusalem; Sonja Noll, currently living in Santiago, Chile; and Christian Noll and his late wife Christine (2022), in Maryland; his three grandchildren: Kristian, Linnea and Karina Noll, along with Craig's two siblings: Mark Noll and Ann Eckert. He will be deeply missed by all.
A memorial service will take place at Exeter Chapel, 765 Ten Rod Road, Exeter, RI, on Saturday, September 10 at 10:00 a.m. At the request of the family, burial will be private. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations can be made to New Covenant Christian Church, 600 North Main Street, North Attleboro, MA 02703, or online at newcovfellowship.net. Condolences may be offered to the family and remembrances of Craig shared on-line at www.carpenterjenks.com.
If you would like to participate remotely, you can access the service live through one of the following options:
(Copy and paste the link into your search bar if hyperlink is unavailable)
https://www.exeterchapel.org/sermons-streaming/
https://boxcast.tv/view/craig-noll-memorial-service-rfpbtq5zrq4cug1shiwr