Nominations for the Grand Island Senior High School Hall of Honor are accepted throughout each year. The Hall of Honor Committee will review all submitted nominations and honor inductees every other year. We are excited to announce the Hall of Honor Banquet & Celebration will be held again on Tuesday, March 12, 2024.
The Hall of Honor, inaugurated in 1983, recognizes Grand Island Senior High School alumni who have made a significant and lasting contribution to the betterment of society. Nominees must have graduated more than 20 years ago from the high school.
Donald Max Noel
Class of 1959
Hall of Honor 1999
Donald Max Noel, retired from the F.B.I., received a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Nebraska Wesleyan in Political Science/History in 1964. Following graduation, Mr. Noel worked for the Hall County Department of Welfare, and the Grand Island Diocese of the Catholic Church.
Mr. Noel left Grand Island in 1968 to attend the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s New Agents Training School at Quantico, Virginia. He graduated and was eventually assigned to the San Francisco Field Office of the F.B.I. in October, 1969, where he served for the next thirty years.
Over that period of time Mr. Noel received numerous letters of commendation and incentive awards from every Director of the F.B.I., including J. Edgar Hoover. In 1993, he was chosen to be a member of the newly formed Unabom Task Force (UTF), and began investigating a seventeen-year series of unsolved bombings. In 1994, Mr. Noel was promoted to the position of Supervisory Special Agent of the UTF. His UNABOM investigation in rural Montana led to the arrest of suspect Theodore J. Kaczynski on April 3, 1996, at Kaczynski’s rural, isolated cabin near Lincoln, Montana.
Mr. Noel was personally presented with the “Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award” by Attorney General Janet Reno in 1998.
