Photo via Paul Noth - Substack
Dominique Paul Noth
Dominique Paul Noth
Dominique Paul Noth struck me as overqualified for his job—at least the more administrative loose ends as arts editor for the Milwaukee Journal. In the ‘80s I was probably one of his editorial loose ends, a young punk—literally—with poor spelling and an attitude kept in check by an old-world deportment that he probably appreciated. I thought he was better suited for the New Yorker than the Journal, and I might have been right. I had no idea he was born in New York, and little idea of what he had accomplished outside the Journal.
I last saw him in February, across a crowded room on opening night of the Milwaukee Rep’s McNeal. He died on June 26 from advanced COPD. He was 84.
His son Paul, Wisconsin’s first Cartoonist Laureate in a program sponsored by the Museum of Wisconsin Art, sent a message to family friends outlining his life. Dominique Noth was born in 1942 to a family of recently arrived refugees from Hitler’s Europe. In the ‘60s, he came to Milwaukee to attend Marquette, where he acted and directed in the university’s nationally recognized Teatro Maria, a bastion and training ground for serious theater in Milwaukee. Noth was a founding member of the American Theatre Critics Association.
By the end of the ‘60s he was a film and theater critic for the Milwaukee Journal, considered one of the nation’s top dailies, and rose up the ranks in the coming decade, assuming various tasks before becoming the paper’s arts editor. In the ‘70s he taught a popular course at UW-Milwaukee, “Homage to Hollywood,” marking him as a local pioneer in what was still a nascent field.
After the Milwaukee Journal’s 1995 merger with the Milwaukee Sentinel, he “voluntarily departed in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs,” according to his political blog, Dom’s Domain. He became editor of the Milwaukee Labor Press in 2002, earning awards for that paper before it stopped publishing in 2013. Afterward Noth returned to his first journalistic love, the theater, writing critiques for Urban Milwaukee.
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About a month before his death, I was pleased to receive a Linked-in invitation from him. We exchanged good words and I wish the dialogue had continued … but who stops to wonder what little time remains. Over the past decade, Dominique Noth often came to mind as I wrestled with editorial responsibilities. He was a good example. Noth handled his job with intelligence and faced the people with which he was confronted—like the long-ago version of me—with urbane tolerance.
A celebration of life for Dominique Paul Noth will begin at 2 p.m. Sunday, August 2, at Turner Hall, with a gathering and reception followed by a memorial tribute at 4 p.m.
In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to the Dominique Paul Noth Memorial Fund in support of the arts, civic life and community. Please send donations to: https://link.edgepilot.com/x/m2K43xMIgeWHS3tZstgtR-Y?u=https://gmf.fcsuite.com/erp/donate/create/fund?funit_id=7733
