Chris Baer teaches photography and graphic design at Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School. He’s been collecting vintage photographs for many years.
David Noble came to Martha’s Vineyard in 1933 as a patient at the Marine Hospital in Vineyard Haven. Formerly employed on an oil tanker, Mr. Noble was slowly freezing up; he suffered from a creeping debility which ultimately left him almost completely paralyzed. By the time he turned 40, Mr. Noble was unable to leave the bed in the small home on Mount Aldworth that he shared with his sister Olive. Unable to walk, sit up, or even turn his head, he couldn’t even read because of eyestrain and his inability to hold a book or magazine. He only had full use of his right hand and his voice.
In 1949 Mr. Noble turned to ham radio. Friends set up a radio set and transmitter for him, cleverly adapted to accommodate his disabilities. He quickly earned his amateur radio license and call sign — W1SGL — and went on to become a familiar voice on the airwaves, speaking with hams from all over the earth, and tracking his conversations on the world map he hung on his wall. Vineyard hams would gather each week in his home in an informal club meeting, and Noble began to collect QSL cards — personalized postcards traditionally traded by hams after each new contact. This photograph became Noble’s QSL card. His niece Kathie Noble Case of Edgartown, who moved to the Island with her family in her childhood to care for her uncle, writes, “He did radio right up until his death in ’68. It was what we believed kept him alive all those years.”