The Life And Times Of Noah Billie

By Charles Flowers

There is something about Noah Billie's work that brings a smile. Part of it may come from the simple discovery of it, hidden away in some attic or private home, or a wall in the Seminole Tribal headquarters, where secretaries shoot suspicious gazes at so-called curators who want to "borrow" their paintings. The search for Noah Billie's paintings, like the search for his life, has more than its share of blind alleys, of silences, and smoothed-over recollections. Brush strokes hide secret passages.

Noah Billie was not an easy man to know. But his art, now that's a different story.

His talent for art, and his subject matter, came from his parents, Alice and Charlie Billieboy (Noah, like the rest of his generation, would drop the "boy"), and his grand-fathers, Ingram Billie and Sam Huff. Noah's father carved souvenirs and sold them to tourists on the Jungle Queen, a tourist boat that still cruises daily out of Bahia Mar on Fort Lauderdale Beach. His mother was legendary for her beadwork.

His wife Brenda remembers Noah as a man who straddled at least two cultures: the traditional Seminole culture of his parents and grand-parents -- the way of life he lived on the Trail and Big Cypress and Brighton -- and the swiftly changing urban landscape he saw when the family moved to Hollywood, when Noah was about eight. Although still living on a reservation, he attended mostly white Driftwood Middle and McArthur High schools.

The first difference, he told Brenda, was shoes. At Brighton, they were unnecessary. At Stirling Elementary, they were mandatory. The second difference was recreation. At Brighton and Big Cypress, there was hunting (Noah once attempted squirrel hunting with a knife, brother Mark remembers, and ended up sticking himself in the shoulder and being rushed to the hospital in Clewiston).

"He was strong-willed," said Mark. "If he set his mind to something, he would do it no matter what anyone said."

In Hollywood, there was football.

"He was the biggest guy we had," said Moses Jumper, Jr., who remembers Noah as the first one picked for football games, the last one you wanted to pick a fight with. "But he had a gentle, sensitive side, too."

Noah had two younger brothers; all were named after Biblical figures. Jonah was closest in age, Mark was youngest. Noah had four older sisters: Leoda, Martha, JoAnn and Frances.

Mark remembers Noah as the ideal big brother: ready to stick up for him without even being asked. But never abusive or bullying.

Noah left McArthur for Chilocco Indian School in Oklahoma. After graduation, he enlisted in the Marines.

Noah was a Seminole man of the Vietnam War generation. That means that he, like others who came to manhood in the late-1960s, would be deeply touched by that conflict. His brother Mark remembers their father making medicine before sending Noah off to war. And his sister Leoda remembers their mother, who still does not speak English, sitting in front of the television when Noah was overseas, trying to fathom a war that most of America found increasingly unfathomable.

Noah and the rest of the Seminoles who fought in Vietnam came back in one piece. Mark Billie firmly believes it was because of their father's medicine.

Seminole Tribal President Mitchell Cypress, also a Vietnam veteran, remembers Noah telling him later, "We all made it back." It was only later that Cypress understood what he was saying.

But Noah would not come back totally unscathed. Because he enlisted in the Marines, his tour of duty would last four years. And because he fought during the "scorched earth" phase of the Vietnam War, he would be exposed to deadly chemicals dropped by U.S. aerial forces. His wife Brenda, a nurse, believes the U.S. government shortened his life.

"Noah regretted some things about Vietnam," Brenda Billie said. "He saw innocent children and women killed. But Noah was not a complainer. He was not a wallowing in self-pity kind of person."

Brenda, who knew Noah as a youthful football hero growing up in Hollywood, would see him again as a dialysis nurse in 1989. Barely 40, he had already lost full kidney functioning. He had what is called early onset diabetes, which Brenda Billie blames on Agent Orange, or other chemicals Noah was exposed to in Vietnam. Even though she knew the couple was living on borrowed time, she became Noah's third wife and caretaker through his most successful period as a painter.

Noah Billie died in January 2000 of complications from diabetes. He had suffered his second heart attack in the space of a year. He was 51.He died just as plans were finalized for the first serious exhibition of his work, Feb. 18 through March 31, at the St. Peterburg Museum of History. Not one to ever seek personal glory, Noah "was really looking forward to his show," says Brenda.

Patricia Wickman, who heads the Tribe's Anthropology & Genealogy Department, called Noah her friend. She considers him "the most mature artistic talent that the Seminole Tribe of Florida has ever produced." Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum Director Billy L. Cypress agrees that Noah, because of the long period that he was able to support himself entirely by his art, "is the best painter we have produced, so far." Cypress has put his money where his mouth is; buying Noah Billie paintings for his own collection as well as the museum's. Joe Dan Osceola was also early to recognize the quality of Noah Billie's paintings, and purchased several from the artist.

"The great tragedy of his life was that his artistic span was diminished by his health to such an extent that he never was able to produce a sufficient body of work," Wickman said. "His brilliantly clear vision of the Seminole world was equaled only by his sense of the dramatic and his love of his culture. Noah's talent should have taken him, and the Seminole people, a great deal farther than it was able to. The Seminole people have lost an articulate, artistic spokesperson."

Noah was on total disability as a result of his Vietnam service, and exposure to the chemical warfare practiced on the Viet Cong with occasional bad results for U.S. ground forces. The Marine Corps admitted in a letter to Mr. Billie that he may have been one of those victims.

"What did they call it -- " Brenda Billie asks, trying to remember "-- an infectious herbicide, I think."

Noah also suffered from an old football knee injury that forced him to walk with a cane. But that, too, was aggravated by Vietnam.

Of course, there were other factors, including periods of alcohol abuse, which wore down this former athlete and Marine. But Brenda, who lived with the artist during his most productive period, insists he was not an alcoholic.

"In all the time I knew him, he was drunk maybe three times," she said.

She said that Noah attended Alcoholics Anonymous counseling after a series of Driving Under the Influence (DUI) charges simply because it was court-ordered - not because he was an alcoholic.

Leoda Jumper Osceola, Noah and Mark's oldest sister, said, "I never remember him drinking before he went to Vietnam."

Brother Mark, who works as an alcohol and drug counselor for the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida on the Trail where their grandfather once poled his dugout canoe, said, "Noah's the only one who can say whether he was (an alcoholic) or not. He was no different from a lot of the people that did drink or something else for medication. He did have a problem when he drank."

One problem came in New Mexico, which became a kind of second home for Noah after Vietnam. Both he and Jonah completed course work at the Institute of American Indian Art (IAIA) in Santa Fe, where Brenda Billie says Noah lived for years without a home, literally on the streets. Once, after Noah took a severe beating in a drunken brawl in Santa Fe, his sister JoAnn took their mother on her first airplane ride to nurse her oldest son back to health.

It was worse for Jonah. He died in New Mexico, a victim of a hanta virus infection that took his life in 1992, immediately after he finished at IAIA.

Losing his younger brother at the prime of his life must have scarred Noah emotionally. But he did not show his emotions on the outside. He let them show through his art, which became increasingly polished and varied. Almost always, even in New Mexico, he focused on scenes of traditional Seminole culture. His favorite subject was a Seminole man, sometimes alone, sometimes with a woman and children, poling a dugout canoe through a landscape of cypress trees and other native plants and wildlife.

"His technical abilities are good, he has a certain style," said Polly Nordstrom, who holds a Master's degree in exhibition design from California State University at Fullerton. She curated the tribute exhibit along with Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki curator David Blackard. "But the important part of his art is that it comes from the inside. His way of dealing with his culture was through visual arts."

Sam Bond, director of the St. Petersburg Museum of History, which is the first museum to exhibit a collection of Noah Billie paintings this large, said that for most non-Native visitors to the museum, "Noah Billie symbolizes what is unknown." He said he was proud to show off his art to a new, and wider audience.

Noah Billie left a legacy of art beyond oil paintings. He illustrated an alphabet that is used to teach Miccosukee children. And he carved totem poles for the Seminole Museum in Tampa, Coo-Thun Chobee. One of his paintings was used as the cover for "Seminole Colors," a coloring book used at Ahfachkee School which also helps to explain Seminole culture through images. More than a dozen Seminole artists contributed to the book, which was published last year by the Anthropology & Genealogy Department. Noah's artwork has graced many Tribal projects, including the posters for Discover Native America and the "Native Visions, Native Voices" film festival at Eckerd College

Sixteen paintings hang in tribute to one of the Seminole Tribe's best-loved artists. The works represent perhaps one-third of Noah Billie's output during his life. (The exhibit would have had 17 paintings, but the Tribe's Legal Department refused to part with a 1985 painting of a burial scene.) They are certainly part of Noah's legacy, too. He gave them no titles, just a signature "NB" drawn through with an arrow, and the year it was painted. Amazingly, he was never interviewed about his art during his lifetime.

Once, Brenda recalled, a Tampa Bay magazine reprinted one of Noah's paintings, of Seminole war leader Osceola with an upside-down American flag, which hangs at the Seminole Museum in Tampa. The magazine mistakenly credited the artist as James E. Billie. Even though the Seminole Chairman wrote a letter saying that while he wished he had the talent to make that painting, they had the wrong Billie, the magazine's editors would not publish a correction. The painting was Noah's favorite, but was considered controversial by some Seminoles because Osceola was at war with the United States.

"To me, it's stating that the Seminoles were always mistreated and deceived by the U.S. government, and Osceola was a prime example of that," said Mark Billie.

Brenda Billie offers a very different interpretation: "An upside-down flag meant distress. It was a warrior in trouble, and he needed his countrymen's help."

A second Vietnam-themed painting, from 1988, depicts a Seminole soldier in battle fatigues walking through rice paddies. Black helicopters dot the sky. A traditional Seminole warrior looks down from the clouds. Noah donated the painting to the Seminole Veterans.

"I think if you've got 50,000 different soldiers in that war, you've got 50,000 different stories," said Mitchell Cypress. "What he saw was what he drew."

Noah sold most of his later works to the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum.

"He said he wanted it kept in a museum where all Seminole children could see where their past came from," Brenda Billie recalled. "Never forget that. And be proud of where they came from."

The doctors and nurses who treated him in his last days were amazed by Noah Billie's incredible strength and positive attitude. Besides the withering effects of his diabetes, he had suffered from skin problems that left his back a mass of scars, vision problems that required two lens implants, laser surgery and special lighting to allow him to see well enough to paint. That's why he wears dark glasses in most of the later photographs. Still, he persevered.

"I was with him for 12 years, and I never heard Noah complain," Brenda said.

The very day Noah was taken to intensive care and put on life support, he had requested paints and canvases. He had a few more ideas he wanted to paint.

Charles Flowers is a freelance writer from Fort Lauderdale.

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