J. Merrell Noden ’78

The following is an expanded version of a memorial published in the July 6, 2016, issue.

Merrell Noden died May 31, 2015, of cancer. He spent his career writing about a breadth of topics that never seemed extensive enough to accommodate his free-range curiosity. He wrote for Sports Illustrated for three years, but also wrote for MOJO, Popular Science and the PAW, for which he became one of this magazine’s most prolific, versatile, and illuminating contributors.

Merrell posted a 4:11.9 mile to help his Lawrenceville medley relay team set a national high school indoor record before he came to Princeton to run cross-country. He formed a country rock band, the High Plains Drifters, with Paul Magnin, Robert Golub, and Steven Orland, all members of the Class of 1977. After graduating summa cum laude with an English degree an being elected Phi Beta Kappa, Merrell studied at Oxford, where he earned a master’s degree in English literature and, in 1983, met Eva Mantell, his future wife.

 “Merrell approached life as a fan,” Eva says. “He was a fan of his friends and family and loved to recount their many accomplishments.”

Sir Roger Bannister, the first miler to break the four-minute barrier, once told Merrell during an interview, “But my life has other strands.” So too did Bannister’s interlocutor. Upon returning to the Princeton area at age 47 with Eva and their children, Miranda and Sam, who all survive him, Merrell played Cicero in an undergraduate production of Julius Caesar. His compassion and commitment to others and his devotion to language extended to Trenton State Prison, where he taught Shakespeare to inmates.

Upon his death, those who knew Merrell invoked the Bard: He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.