Husband, dad fought to keep family in U.S.
By Virginia Culver, Denver Post Staff Writer

Denver Post, CO
March 21 2005

Max Noland worked for years to keep his wife and her sons from being
deported to Armenia, but he died before that goal could be assured.

Noland, 55, died March 7 from injuries suffered in a fall from a roof
he was working on in Durango.

He was a person of “deep principles and always reliable,” said Pete
Whiskeman, whose home Noland was renovating when he died.

Whiskeman has stepped up to head the team carrying on the battle to
keep Noland’s wife and children in the United States.

Noland, who was a painter and photographer as well as a construction
worker, married Nvart Idinyan in 1999 in Craig.

“We met on a blind date and didn’t like each other at first,” Idinyan
said. “We fought the whole evening.”

Noland picked the movie, she hated it, and by the time the evening
was over, Idinyan considered Noland “a jerk.”

But he asked her out the next night, and they fell in love and were
“never apart again,” she said.

He adopted two of her sons and was in the process of adopting her
youngest son. He spent hours with the boys, teaching them English
before they started school in Ridgway.

Noland took up his wife’s cause in trying to clear up visa disputes
with the federal government.

Residents of Ouray joined the fight, and altogether the family and
supporters have spent an estimated $100,000 to keep the family from
being deported, Whiskeman said. Idinyan has said the family faces
persecution danger if they return to their native Armenia.

Lloyd “Max” Noland was born Aug. 11, 1949, in Birmingham, Ala., where
he graduated from high school. He served in the Navy in Vietnam and
lived in Texas before coming to Ouray.

He worked for Vanden Branden Construction Co. of Placerville.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by his wife’s sons, Joseph
Sargsyan of Ouray, Hyak Sargsyan of Ridgway and Gevorg Sargsyan of
Boulder; his parents, Tom and Charlotte Weaver of Birmingham, Ala.;
his brother, Ross W. Smith of Baltimore; and three sisters, Charlotte
Rose and Kitty Graff of Birmingham, and Martha Bolton of Abingdon, Va.