OROVADA - Jacob Rueben Goehring was born in Russia. Both he and his future wife Christine's ancestors had escaped Germany to the Ukraine sometime around 1812 due to religious persecution. A century later, with the spread of Communism, there was much unrest in the Ukraine, and many were immigrating to the Americas where they had heard that you could receive free or low-cost land in the vastness of the United States or Canadian West. In 1912, at the age of 14, Jacob and his family sailed to America, barely missing passage on the ill-fated Titanic because of a mix-up. When they safely passed through Ellis Island, they dropped the "o" in Goehring and, following the lead of a cousin, settled in American Falls, Idaho. Eventually Jacob and Christine homesteaded 160 acres, purchased another 160, and began to farm, drilling the first irrigation well in that area. Their grandson Rueben Jacob moved to Murphy, Idaho, in 1967, and their great-grandson Rueben Kiel Gehring, and his wife Lindy (Maynard) both grew up in Melba, Idaho. They, along with their daughters, McDermitt Combined School alumni Neva (Gehring) Noe and her younger sister Roni, moved to Orovada when Rueben took a job as manager of Northrup King Seed Plant.
Neva, born in 1976 in Nampa, Idaho, before going home with her parents to Melba, was 2 years old when she arrived in Orovada. She started kindergarten some three years later with Delores Armknecht in McDermitt. Returning to Orovada Grade School for first through fifth grade she says that Keelie (Johnson) McClintick was her favorite teacher. She remembers getting Apple computers in the second grade, doing a class play called "How To Eat Fried Worms" and learning and performing sign language to "We Are The World." She was in school with Tina and Heidi Plummer and has fond memories of their mom Debbie Hill helping out at school. 4-H was fun with Rosalie Moser teaching them to crochet and Edna Hill guiding them in cooking skills (she won a purple ribbon for her Marionberry pie). Her job as recorder helped to prepare her for the future as she wrote stories about school for the Humboldt Sun. The only sad thing in her young life was the loss of a baby sister when she was in the third grade.
After nine years at the seed plant, Rueben changed jobs and went to work for the Amex Gold Mine and the family moved to McDermitt. Neva says that she was shy and it was a little intimidating to suddenly be in a school with a real junior high, but she enjoyed teachers Ruth Alcorta and Bob Pace. It was fun getting to sing "Wind Beneath My Wings" at the high school graduation with a group of fellow students.
Neva was in accelerated math classes with Gary Punchard and by high school was taking trigonometry and calculus. In addition to her math classes she enjoyed her chemistry class, and government and U.S. history classes with Barb Ferguson. She loved Darlene Albisu's drama and English classes which inspired her future career goals. She was disappointed to have one B during her four years at MHS in Spanish. There was no Spanish teacher on site and Neva had to use a cassette tape and send it to a teacher in Montana! No virtual classroom in those long-ago mid 90's days!
She started playing volleyball and basketball in junior high and continued to play in high school with coaches Bob and Mary Kay Pace for volleyball and, starting with Cindy Sherburn and finishing with Gary Punchard for basketball. She qualified for state in track three out of four years with coaches Bob Pace and Sue Punchard, and she lettered in all three sports.
Neva says that the other extra-curricular activity that she liked was Academic Olympics. Avlina Crutcher was her class advisor, and she enjoyed the senior trip to Santa Clara, Calif., as well as getting to go to Australia to play volleyball at the end of her junior year. In order to make sure that she had her time properly filled, she started working at the Say When in the eighth grade - a job that she held all through high school.
Even as busy as Neva was, she graduated as McDermitt Combined School Salutatorian in 1995 and enrolled at Boise State University for the fall term. She had always loved math so it seemed the degree to work for. During one class she had to write an essay that everyone else was struggling with that she found easy - thanks to the abundance of essays that she had written for Darlene and Barb at MHS! It was at that moment that she changed her major, and consequently graduated with degrees in both English and History - certified to teach 6-12th. While earning her degrees she worked two jobs to support herself; one at the Sunglass Hut at the Boise Mall and the other in the Student Union Building on campus.
Her sophomore year her mom introduced her to Tony Noe of Melba, a University of Idaho graduate and he invited Neva to go to the Nampa Stampede - her first time at the event and their first date. After graduation from BSU in May of 2000, Neva taught summer school, and had her dream wedding that summer when she and Tony married after three years of dating.
Her first position was teaching sophomore English and History in Caldwell, Idaho, but, feeling that she was not wholly equipped to teach, she enrolled at Northwest Nazarene University for a rigorous 15-month program that gave her a Master's degree in Curriculum and Instruction (C&I). She said that it was a great but difficult program that qualified her to design curriculum and was also good professional development.
She was hired in 2002 by the Kuna Middle School, in Kuna, Idaho, to teach seventh-grade Language Arts and World History to approximately 800 students. The first couple of years she also coached the seventh-grade girls volleyball and basketball teams. She has now been there for 10 years and though she loves the work, really enjoys the kids and says that the staff is wonderful, she finds all the politics in today's education field to be difficult and disheartening.
In 2006 Tony and Neva became the proud parents of twin girls who they were able to take home after 15 days of neo-natal care, when they reached a weight of 4 pounds apiece. Grace and Gabriella are healthy, happy 6-year-olds, growing up on the 11 acres that the Noes call home in Melba. Now in kindergarten, Neva says that they are growing up way too fast, and are already reading on their own!
On this 100-year anniversary of the Gehring family coming to America, Neva isn't sure if she will continue to teach until retirement or not, but she does think that she may like to write children's books some day. For fun, both she and Tony, who works for Valley Wide Agronomics, raise "his and hers" gardens, and they spend as much time as possible with Grace and Gabriella.
Neva says that she loved school in McDermitt and appreciates that the teachers there had her amply prepared for college. If she were to talk to the McDermitt kids today she would tell them, "Thinking about your future and dreaming is important, but ambition, perseverance and a lot of determination when life gets tough, are essentials to making your dreams a reality!"
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