RIP Buck Noe

[Drunk Monk]

‘We love you, Bucky’: Surf neighborhood mourns iconic board shaper swallowed up by dependancy at 41

Lots of those that knew surfboard shaper Tyrone “Buck” Noe greatest nonetheless wrestle to just accept this ultimate chapter of his tumultuous life.
They can not fathom the findings of a Santa Cruz Police Division investigation that stated his life ended on a path under Ocean View Park within the early hours of Could 2 with a deadly knife wound to his chest and no indicators of foul play.
“He was actually working exhausting, he was even browsing once more,” his good friend Darren instructed the big, emotional crowd gathered at Lighthouse Discipline on Saturday. “This can be a tragedy and an odd flip of occasions.”
Others, together with his sister, Meara Boling, focus extra on therapeutic and serving to others study from her brother’s struggles. Boling, who had helped Buck navigate the challenges of life for a few years within the wake of their father’s dying 18 years in the past, stated she more and more felt {that a} tragic ending was imminent.

Meara Boling, Buck Noe’s older sister, stands in entrance of a crowd at Lighthouse Discipline.
(Kevin Painchaud/Lookout Santa Cruz)


Now right here she was, practically twenty years after the dying of her dad, a gregarious man often known as “Kong” who started the household’s surfboard shaping legacy, searching at so lots of the similar faces that had turned out in assist then, feeling an odd, painful sense of déjà vu.
“I am right here on the Lane for a memorial paddleout [i]once more,” [/i]she instructed a teary-eyed crowd of about 200 that turned out in drive for her brother simply because it had for her father.
“My relationship with Buck has been [i]actually [/i]troublesome the previous few years,” she continued. “His alcoholism and dependancy to him took a more durable, darker flip, and he struggled. I inspired Buck like so a lot of you, like [i]there [/i]of you, to attain sobriety and do the work and be current for your loved ones. I’ve spent many of the final 5 years worrying about my brother — worrying about him dying.”
Buck Noe, 41, leaves behind his fiancée, Chelsea Plemons-Jones, and younger son, Reef. The 5-year-old ran backwards and forwards throughout the Lighthouse Discipline garden, a spitting picture of his father from him, checking again in along with his mother and grandma usually.

Buck Noe’s 5-year-old son, Reef, checks in along with his mother, Chelsea Plemons-Jones, on Saturday.
(Kevin Painchaud/Lookout Santa Cruz)


“All of us right here must be there for Reef,” stated a longtime good friend and neighbor named Ethan. “Look out for him, give him some love, some fatherly recommendation — be there for him. He is gonna want that.”
Others who knew Buck instructed tales in regards to the fun-loving, adventure-seeking, tow-headed child who usually confirmed his love for pals in probably the most bodily method doable.
“I am positive like 80% of you’ve gotten most likely wrestled Buck,” his longtime good friend Shane Skelton instructed the group, most of them suited up in wetsuits prematurely of the standard paddleout, the time-honored ceremony with which the browsing neighborhood marks to go. “Buck [i]actually[/i] favored to wrestle.”
Boling, who was 9 when his brother was born, talked in regards to the time a still-in-diapers Buck leaped out of their truck on Mission Road. “Are you able to guys think about a 2-year-old Buck in a physique forged all summer time?” she requested the group.
She additionally shared the problem of being the “non-surfing sister” within the Noe household. She recalled the time Buck lent her a board that she took out for a paddle after which chastised her for drifting too near the precise surf break.

Folks strolled down a Noe household reminiscence lane Saturday at Lighthouse Discipline.
(Kevin Painchaud/Lookout Santa Cruz)


Others remembered a softer facet lurking under that sturdy floor that will escape in refined methods, Buck taking nice pleasure in shaping surfboards for younger, wide-eyed groms or serving to spend time with a neighbor child who had a critical incapacity.
However family and friends could not assist however recall how Buck’s father, Rick — dubbed the “The Mayor of Steamer Lane” for incomes acclaim as a Westside surfer and shaper within the Nineteen Seventies — fell exhausting into alcoholism after sustaining a critical neck damage when Buck was simply 9.
Rick needed to have a spinal fusion and put on a halo and endured fixed ache, Boling stated. Even worse, he might not surf or do all the opposite issues he liked a lot.
“He wasn’t the large Viking anymore,” she stated. “He might n’t ski, he might n’t play tennis. He needed to have this huge piece of froth on the entrance of his board the place he laid his brow simply so he might paddle out on a surfboard. However he could not surf anymore.

Saturday’s crowd at Lighthouse Discipline, gathered for Buck Noe’s memorial.
(Kevin Painchaud/Lookout Santa Cruz)


After Buck’s mother, Laura Powers, a surfboard artist famend for her pin traces and an early girls’s browsing pioneer, moved to Hawaii and Meara was off at school in Berkeley, it was simply Rick and Buck.
“Buck was type of Dad’s caretaker — and so they had been a lot alike,” Boling instructed Lookout. “Folks liked Buck. He was unabashed in loving individuals. You recognize, he would simply join and open up and would make individuals really feel good round him.”
Buck was solely 23 when he discovered his father unresponsive at their Windham Road house in Midtown, useless of obvious cardiac failure. Rick Noe, 54, was n’t in fine condition at that time, his daughter stated, although he was nonetheless shaping surfboards and dealing exhausting on his personal sobriety.

Heavy hearts had been discovered in all places Saturday at Lighthouse Discipline.
(Kevin Painchaud/Lookout Santa Cruz)


Boling instructed the group that their father’s dying drew Buck and her nearer: “We liked on one another extra and leaned on one another to navigate the horrible loss.”
As she noticed him gravitate towards the identical demons that had befallen their dad, she requested him to select.
“I begged him to solely take the great of Dad and to depart the remaining — to not have this be his journey,” Boling stated.
Now, Boling says, she desires others to understand how exhausting her brother tried in that effort, although it may not at all times have appeared so.

Memorials for Buck Noe that shall be hung in the neighborhood.
(Kevin Painchaud/Lookout Santa Cruz)


“He labored so exhausting to attempt, time and again,” she stated. “Are you able to think about how exhausting it’s to attempt, and wish to be sober, and never have the ability to do it? I do not need him to be remembered as a failure. I need us to know that his strengths carried him so far as he might go. And it is most likely farther than any of us might’ve finished strolling in Buck’s sneakers.”

Meara Boling fights again tears.
(Kevin Painchaud/Lookout Santa Cruz)


Boling, who lives in Alaska after transferring away from Santa Cruz together with her household 15 years in the past, instructed the group how a lot their assist for her brother meant to her.
“I’ve spoken to a lot of you and I do know that you’ve supported him to the most effective of your capacity for so long as you possibly can,” she stated. “Perhaps you helped him by discovering him in a foul place and getting him out of it, possibly you took him house, possibly you danced him out of a tricky scenario or possibly even actually jail. Perhaps you lent him cash, possibly you dropped him off recent banana nut bread since you needed to point out him how a lot you liked him.”

Noe craft from all through the many years gathered on the Lighthouse Discipline garden Saturday.
(Kevin Painchaud/Lookout Santa Cruz)


She instructed them she needed her brother’s unvarnished story to be instructed as a result of there are many others struggling who need assistance and assist.
“I wish to each acknowledge and never disguise the struggles that Buck confronted as a result of I do not wish to stigmatize this,” she stated. “I do not need individuals to not have the ability to get assist.”
Boling instructed Lookout that Buck, like his father earlier than him, had been out and in of restoration applications, with totally different ranges of success. She emphasised that getting sobriety sources is extraordinarily troublesome.
“It is exhausting to get assist. The system is basically, actually exhausting,” she stated. “He did n’t have the proper instruments, although he tried. I simply could not carry it anymore.”
As others instructed tales of particular surfboards formed for them by Buck, or grade-school recollections of an apple pie that Buck so proudly baked all on his personal, Reef Noe ran across the grassy subject scattered with tons of of surfboards his dad and grandpa had formed for the group assembled through the years.
“We love you, Bucky,” stated one among his pals who took the mic briefly, too damaged as much as say far more.
Quickly they’d paddle them out at Steamer Lane, maintain fingers and ship their good friend’s ashes into the air and his spirit off into the good blue yonder.

Folks had their Noe craft in a single hand and a flower within the different coming into the water Saturday at Steamer Lane.
(Kevin Painchaud/Lookout Santa Cruz)


Even because the Noe sister who would not surf, Boling wasn’t about to be neglected of the water ceremony.
She borrowed a board and a wetsuit and paddled out alongside together with her brother’s grief-stricken associate, Chelsea. However not with out the assistance of the identical tight-knit neighborhood she’d been supported by 18 years earlier, on this exact same bittersweet spot that celebrates so a lot of this surf city’s victories and losses.
“Everybody got here collectively to assist elevate us up and ship Bucky off proper,” she stated. “That is the kind of particular neighborhood Santa Cruz is.”

Saturday’s scene from above Steamer Lane for Buck Noe.
(Kevin Painchaud/Lookout Santa Cruz)

Ethan lives right next door to me. He often hangs his surf gear out to dry over our shared fence. Sometimes it falls into our yard. He and I have connected a lot more since Buck's passing. We were always neighborly but have had several conversations since.