Orem Woman Citizen Of The Year

Citizen of the Year: Tye Noorda
Tye Noorda, born Lewena Taylor, began her life in Freedom, Utah, near Moroni. Freedom was properly named: It was free of stores, schools, mail delivery, electricity, after-school activities and any other girls her age. Despite these obstacles, she always wanted to be an actress. During her high-school years, she earned money for college by correcting shorthand papers. She left Freedom the day after graduating from high school and moved to Salt Lake, where she got well-paying secretarial jobs. In addition to working hard for her room and board, she became a leading lady in the Salt Lake Theatre's production of "Seven Sisters." In a series of events, Maude Mae Babcock, former head of the Speech and Drama Department at the University of Utah for 40 years, invited Noorda to live with her. This allowed her to learn quite a bit about speech and drama every evening.
In addition to improving her verbal delivery, she took modeling classes from "Zaz" at the Hotel Utah. After two years of college, she ended up living with and assisting the modeling school. The pair eventually moved to New York City, but Zaz ended up in Hollywood and Tye returned to Salt Lake.
It was there that she met Ray Noorda on a blind date one night before he graduated from the University of Utah. They had four more dates that week before he moved back east to work for General Electric. The two corresponded for a year and were married five days after he came home for vacation. The two had five children, lived in seven areas of the United States, and eventually came back to Utah when Ray took on the job to run Novell. At that time, Novell had only17 employees, but by the time he retired, that number had grown to 12,000.
Ray died two years ago, after 56 years of marriage. Although Tye and Ray Noorda have contributed to more than a few organizations and causes, including SCERA and UVU, she would rather be known for the personal relationships and individual differences that she has made in the lives of those in the Orem community and in the many others of which she has been a part.

Daily Herald