R.I.P. Noah
Noah Ginnings–one of the best people I’ve ever had the honor of knowing–passed away this morning at the age of 26 after a long and hard-fought bout with cancer. I’m not exaggerating when I say that he was the most well-known and well-loved student at the University of Montana, and I am very sad that he is gone. Noah was the kind of guy that would make you laugh and feel welcome and comfortable under any circumstance, whether it was by loosening up the nervous college freshman at orientation by leading the entire room in the Y.M.C.A. while wearing an Olivia Newton John “Let’s Get Physical” get-up or by being the hilarious, heckling voice of the university’s student section during the nail-biting sports games. If you knew him, you loved him. Plain and simple. If you didn’t know him, then you missed out on an amazing person.
Someone put it best on a post to Noah’s Facebook wall earlier today: “Never in my life have I nor will I meet someone who was more of an inspiration to people than you. “
That couldn’t be more true. Rest in peace, pal.
Updated with eulogy from the Montana Kaimin:
Noah Ginnings’s nearly eight-year bout with brain cancer ended Thursday morning in his parents’ home in Missoula. He is survived by his father, Larry Ginnings, mother, Deb Chittick, and sister, Liza – all of whom were at his bedside when he died, according to a close friend.
Noah was a central figure in the University of Montana Advocates program, intramural sports, the Montana Children’s Theater and a fanatic at Griz basketball and football games. He graduated from UM in a special ceremony in October.
The 26-year-old was a University of Montana legend. Almost all students knew him, and if they didn’t, they knew his name. In his eight years as a student, Noah tried some seven different majors, from dance to education, and everything in between, so most professors knew him, too.
“You never wanted to walk across campus with him because everybody would stop and talk. It would take you half an hour just to get where you were going,” said Karissa Drye, who coordinated the Advocates program with Noah early in his eight-year tenure as a UM student.
There is a reason people wanted to talk to Noah. He poked fun at himself and everybody he met. He wanted them to laugh, to lighten up and to feel good about life.
Alex Gosline, a close friend and fellow Advocate, remembers his wild sense of humor and fiercely competitive nature. Noah had just recovered from a brain surgery in which doctors removed a branching tumor and part of his temporal lobe. He challenged a friend to a round of the dot game, a contest of strategy in which players connect dots and try to complete squares to earn points. Noah won handily, and Gosline recalls him saying, “You just got beat by somebody with four-fifths of a brain. How smart do you feel now?”
Hunter Jones and Bridget Smith, the current coordinators of the Advocates, remember Noah’s outlandish ideas and his ability to rally people to any cause, even “back farts.” At one Advocates’ meeting, he had dozens of students lying back on the cold, hard floor with their shirts up, trying to make farting noises with their backs.
“It was just Noah being very inappropriate at very inconvenient times,” Smith said, beaming.
Drye remembers some of his less theatrical stage appearances. One year at freshman orientation, he performed a dance he’d choreographed to the song, “Rollin’ on the River,” wearing a wig and tear-away pants. Halfway through the dance, she said, the pants came off to reveal athletic shorts that were “at least eight sizes too small.”
“He just loved to make fun of himself to make other people laugh,” Drye said. “And if you were around Noah, you were laughing. He used to pull up his shirt, push out his stomach like he was pregnant and rub it. You could see his flaming red chest hair.”
For as funny as he was, Noah was a warrior. He brawled with cancer tooth and nail.
“We’ve had him three or four years longer than brain cancer patients normally survive,” Gosline said. “He fought so hard.”
In September, after three surgeries, massive amounts of radiation and enough drugs to kill a horse-sized cancer, doctors told Noah a new tumor had appeared in his brain. It was inoperable. If the treatments were to continue, they’d do more to kill his quality of life than to kill the disease.
“When he first got taken off the treatment, I asked him how long he was planning on fighting this,” Gosline said. “He said ‘Hell, give me eight months — then I’m gonna put on my gloves.’”
He and Gosline made plans for the coming summer. They were going to go to a Daft Punk concert. There was also a silent understanding between them never to say goodbye.
“The last time I saw him is the last time I’ll see him until heaven,” he said. “I’m glad we just left it at ‘I love you’ and ‘I’ll see you soon.’”
Noah fought for the Montana Grizzlies almost as hard as he fought the cancer. A couple years back, he got really hyped at a basketball game, Gosline said.
“He yelled and screamed and jumped around and heckled the other team the entire game,” he said. “I think he played harder than any of the players that night. We won that game and he thought he got his work done. Rather than hanging out, he just went home and passed out.”
He wasn’t just a Griz fan, though, Gosline said.
“He had a passion that no one else could ever have,” he said.
Drye said Noah was the most loving person she’d ever met.
“His death is really going to affect a lot of people because he loved all of us so much,” she said. “We can all feel the void.”
Smith’s eyes welled up when she said, “He had so much to give, just not enough time.”
Jones agreed.
“He’s one of those guys who makes you want there to be a heaven so you can meet him again,” he said.
Noah’s family couldn’t talk to reporters, but Gosline said funeral arrangements are still being made.
“I have a feeling that the funeral isn’t going to be a standard funeral,” he said. “I imagine there will be people there who’ve never met Noah or his family.”
