USU alumnus finds his way back to Logan
Because the education necessary for Steve Noel’s current employment was obtained at the University of Idaho’s law school, many people might think the Ogden resident’s heart should lie in Moscow, Idaho. That’s where the Block A, USU professors and a former Aggie basketball rivalry with University of Nevada Las Vegas could prove anyone wrong.
Noel, the current chapter president of the Weber region — and soon to be vice president of the USU Alumni Association — calls himself a true-blooded Aggie from Utah.
A few minutes of conversation reveals as much, too. His oldest son sleeps in a room laden with Utah State apparel hanging from every corner of the room. With the help of his chapter board, Noel has planned previous alumni golf tournaments that raise money for USU scholarships. He has brought basketball Head Coach Stew Morrill into the area to speak with supporters of the basketball program.
It’s a devotion to a school that Noel said is merited by his own graduation, as well as the fact that his parents met at USU, and four of his five siblings attended here.
All Noel said he wonders, is why it should be any other way.
“To me, it’s the pure college atmosphere at USU,” Noel said. “Especially within the state of Utah, I don’t think there’s another university like it — the way it provides the going-away-to-college atmosphere. Hanging out at First Dam with friends, studying on the Quad during the warmer months — it’s just really unique.”
Though Noel’s business management and sociology degrees do not directly translate into his current position, primarily as a litigation attorney with Smith-Knowles Attorneys in Ogden, he said he doesn’t have to look beyond Logan to recognize since-retired faculty members. People who Noel said were pivotal to his academic growth, even before his graduation from USU in 1994.
“David Danes challenged me and taught me how to think critically,” said Noel, a two-time selection among Utah’s Legal Elite by Utah Business Magazine. “He was a good influence on me in terms of my education and approaching law school and those types of things.”
Danes’ influence on Noel as a former lawyer, earlier in life, along with an internship for former Utah Lt. Gov. Olene Walker that Noel experienced in a summer while he was still enrolled at USU, were critical to Noel’s decision to pursue law in Moscow, his wife Wendy said, who was married to him at the time.
“All the experiences we had played a big role in helping us figure out exactly what we wanted in life,” his wife, an elementary education graduate from USU the same year, said. “We just had such opportunities (at USU).”
Such opportunities included the opportunity for Noel and his eventual wife to meet as fellow students. Though she had been dating Noel’s roommate following his return from LDS mission in 1990, after he got back, things changed.
“After a few months, she decided that maybe she needed a change,” Noel said. “Truth be told, they weren’t going out anymore. That’s all it took.”
The two were engaged on Noel’s 20th birthday, in July, following five months of courtship, and preceding a September 1991 marriage in the Salt Lake City LDS temple.
“And we made each other True Aggies,” Noel said, of the eventful homecoming weekend of that year. “It came a matter of weeks after (getting married).”
Both parties were quick to say that things are still the same at USU when it comes to enthusiasm for its basketball program. Noel said he fondly remembers waiting overnight with his wife to enter the Spectrum during one season to be a part of the student section, which would be rooting against a Jerry Tarkanian-led UNLV program, which had won the national championship in 1990 and posted an undefeated regular season the following year.
Taking on opponents on a regular basis is a standard procedure for Noel as well. Late in the fall of 2005, Noel faced what he described as one of the most interesting cases of his career, when he defended an Ogden police officer who had been chasing a speeding driver who killed both the driver and the passenger of another vehicle, along with an innocent bystander.
The family of the deceased driver filed a lawsuit against the officer, claiming an unreasonable pursuit. That branch of the case closed with the officer being found innocent.
“Those cases are very challenging because someone lost a family member dear to them, which nobody would want to happen,” Noel said. “Yet, at the same time, the question remains of whether the officer or the city is responsible. That’s very challenging because of the emotions and sympathies and real-life aspect to it.”
Nor is it easy to defend a case so ironic, he added.
“It’s a difficult thing. If the officer doesn’t try to stop (the driver), he could harm others later on that evening, and the officer gets faulted for not trying to stop them,” he said. “But if (the officer) stops them and someone gets hurt in trying to stop them, (the officer) is faulted for trying to stop them.”
The case is currently on appeal and will be argued in the Utah Supreme Court this month, though Noel said the convict is currently in prison for failing to yield to law enforcement, along with a felony regarding the deaths of the occupants the car he hit.
Despite the realities that law continually faces, it’s not something from which Noel is about to step away — despite the fact that he consistently manages 30 to 50 cases in a given day.
“I do like the challenge of the dispute,” he said. “Disputes can be challenging; they carry with them emotion and positions that parties have taken. I’ve found that no two disputes are alike, so even though many disputes across my desk are similar, I have never run into one the same.”
Patty Halaufia, the executive director of the alumni association, said she is just glad that it’s not a challenge for an alumnus like Noel to credit the university for being a significant
springboard to where he stands today — whether that be in front of a judge or elsewhere.
“I often hear alumni say things from campus from 10, 20, 50 years of ‘Oh, I loved my time at Utah State,'” Halaufia said. “They have a lifetime connection to it.”
— rhett.wilkinson@aggiemail.usu.edu