by Daniel Anderson
Fatherhood started for Jeff Noblitt with waiting, watching, and an excessive amount of handwashing. His firstborn, Nicolas, spent 101 days in the NICU after his traumatic birth. “I didn’t hold him until Easter, two months later,” Jeff said. Since the initial delay and distance, he has made moments and memories a priority for not only Nicolas but also Nathaniel and Eliza, his middle child and youngest, as well.
Having a son with disabilities, Jeff knew that extra time and attention would be needed for doctor visits, treatments, and accessibility. Rather than carve that time from outside pursuits, his career, or, in the worst case, the other two children, he has made it an intentional and purposeful endeavor to either give each subject its own dedicated space or create opportunities for intersectionality—civic theatre productions they can all rehearse together, trappings of the higher education system that promote family participation or exploring East Texas together.
The Noblitts came to East Texas in December 2021 from Los Angeles, but their family story started in Illinois. “People say that the California to Texas move must be really hard, but the main thing I really miss are the mountains,” Jeff said. “The transition to Tyler has been so easy, and we’ve found such a warm community, especially at the University.” As the Vice President of Marketing at The University of Texas at Tyler, his family has found a ready-made community from basketball games to Cowan Center shows. “Higher education offers an awesome work-life balance everywhere I’ve worked,” he said.
On Valentine’s Day of 2008, Jeff’s wife Natalie went into emergency labor on a Chicago commuter train. With no birthing classes, she was hurried to Rush-Copley Medical Center in Aurora. Nicolas was born at 26 weeks, weighing one pound and twelve ounces. At 10 days old, he received open-heart surgery. The traumatic birth led to a brain bleed that produced scarring and eventually a cerebral palsy diagnosis. For nearly three months, Nicolas would be on a ventilator and using a nasogastric tube for feeding. Eventually, he was fitted with a heart monitor—“the world’s most expensive baby monitor,” joked Jeff. “We did shifts. My wife stayed every day at the hospital, and I’d come after work and stay until shift change.
That didn’t stop a connection from forming. “I would read to him the books that I loved growing up,” Jeff said with the emotion starting to reach its brim. “I would talk to him all the time. Eventually, I got to change his diaper, and I could put my hand on his back, even if he fit in my entire hand. The saying that the NICU is a rollercoaster is definitely true.”
Parents of children with special needs face a daunting set of challenges, something Jeff and Natalie knew from the outset, including the intimidating statistics regarding the number of marriages that don’t make it through caring for a child with disabilities. It also takes reimagining how many parents view the expectations of what their child will become – but not in a limiting way. “There’s a book that says, ‘you will dream new dreams,’” Jeff said. “He won’t play football like I did, but we didn’t want to limit his possibilities. He now has his SAG-AFTRA card and a new movie that came out as number one on Apple TV. We didn’t want to limit him or his wildest dreams.”
While the present state of those proud father dreams involves the film Outcome featuring Keanu Reeves, Cameron Diaz, and Jonah Hill, and a New York City premiere, they began with a route familiar to so many dads: little league baseball. The West Hills Champions are an adaptive baseball league in Los Angeles that the Noblitts joined when Nicolas was eligible. Beyond helping to provide a simultaneous sense of inclusion and normalcy, Jeff said it opened the family up to meet parents of other kids with disabilities and join an adaptive dance company called Infinite Flow, which involved a number of budding actors. Both the dance class and baseball league would field inquiries for Nicolas from casting directors.
“A friend’s son had been doing commercials and connected us with an agency—DDO Artists—that he’s still with. He was the first of their clients as a child actor with a disability,” said Jeff. “We got head shots at 7 or 8 years old, and he did a Burger King commercial.
That was a quick success and led to a Target commercial that was one of their first to feature a child with a disability.”
Success in commercials led Nicolas to a Disney PSA and guest appearances on Ramy, Speechless, and S.W.A.T. before eventually leading to feature films, The Contractor with Chris Pine, and the aforementioned Outcome.
“When we’re filming, I’m his assistant. I’m his accessibility coordinator and do everything from lifting him to helping with wardrobe,” Jeff said of Nicolas’s filming opportunities, including the set of The Contactor in Bucharest, Romania. “I’m being his dad and doing my best to make sure he’s safe on set.”
Before their second son, Nathaniel (Nate), was born, there were some prenatal concerns, but nothing the Noblitts felt they couldn’t handle. They had scheduled a delivery date and time, but 48 hours beforehand, Nate arrived early, but healthy, as Natalie’s second emergency C-section. Then in 2013, they welcomed their third child, daughter Eliza, a fiery redhead with the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. After their third high-stakes delivery, the family left Illinois and Jeff’s community college job for a role in Marketing and Communications in the Cal State system.
With the family growing and becoming “Dad” to multiple children, Jeff felt it was important to find opportunities to foster their relationship as siblings. The dance company had combined both wheelchair and standing dancers, but the hope was to find something for the rest of the family. “One cool experience in California that integrates the whole family is called The Painted Turtle, a camp supported by Paul Newman and the Newman’s Own brand,” as Jeff told the story. “It has a philosophy of kids who are sick or different, deserving to have a fun time. It’s outdoors, but it’s accessible, the way the world should be. The thing they realized is that disability doesn’t just affect one child.” The camp would provide weekends for all the kids in a family unit, even grandma, not just the disabled child. Additionally, they would offer a cerebral palsy-specific camp and a weeklong “sibling camp” as well.
Fostering time together has also allowed Jeff to help develop the interests of Nate and Eliza, as well. The two youngest Noblitts took a Spring Break camping trip with Jeff last year that included visits to four different National Parks. Nate had a special solo trip to Austin to see his favorite band, Tame Impala. Eliza has been fostering her creativity as a visual artist at Caldwell Arts Academy, with much of her art disability-focused, including a series taking Barbies and exploring the ideas of blindness and wheelchair use.
Jeff also contends that the move to Texas has expanded opportunities for all of his children. “They can have a free-range childhood in a safe, suburban environment,” he said. In Los Angeles, even though they were enjoying outdoor time, they lived near a busy street and could never really let the kids go play and run outside. Nate, in particular, has taken to exploring the neighborhood through running and walking. Eliza prefers her bike, but both enjoy hikes in the hills of East Texas. The closest experience to that in Los Angeles was exploring the California State University Northridge campus on scooters with Nicolas in his wheelchair.
One of the family’s best discoveries since the move has been their welcome into Tyler Civic Theatre. Jeff, Nicolas, and Eliza all auditioned and were cast in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, premiering in December 2022. “We really found community in multiple ways—family, friends, artistry,” Jeff said. Eliza had been stage acting in Los Angeles from a very early age, and at one point, all three kids had artistic representation, though Nate decided he’d prefer to pursue different interests. Since then, they have appeared as a family in The Sound of Music, 9 to 5, and Annie, with Descendants coming this summer. Nicolas performed in Grease on his own, but with Jeff at nearly every rehearsal to help with accessibility.
Nate has chosen a quieter pursuit, harkening back to Jeff’s Boy Scout roots—both of his parents were Scout leaders for him—and exploring the outdoors. Together, they go on “scouting” trips to determine accessibility for a site in case it could host the entire family. Mount Magazine in Arkansas was a recent family favorite.
The generational connection of camping speaks to a larger theme that Jeff has been trying to employ as a father. As an only child for 11 years, Jeff maintained a lot of his parents’ attention at a time when they were young. That personal focus, along with an exploration of the world, is being passed along to the next generation of Noblitts. The practical experience may have its roots in the academic environment, as Jeff’s father also had a career in higher education.
“My dad provided a lot of modeling for how I wanted to be,” he said. “He spent his career in higher education and career-hopped around the country. That helped shape me into who I am, being open to new experiences and travel. While he had a successful career, he was still very involved with me as a coach and organizer of neighborhood kickball games.”
Seeing the number of moves his father made in his career, Jeff has tried to walk a more deliberate path, leaving his initial role in the publishing industry to find something more family-friendly. “This is my third university, with eight years spent at each of the prior institutions. Some things I learned from him were how to be flexible and adapt to change,” he said.
Though Jeff’s parents divorced later in life, the experience provided valuable lessons on how to keep a marriage strong. His mother now lives with the Noblitts, helping to “manage the chaos” of three kids and allowing Jeff and Natalie to focus on time together or with each of the three individual kids.
As children get older and more independent, the role of their father can and should change in their lives. Even with a child who has special needs, there is a “fatherly duty to prepare and adapt,” Jeff said. Nicolas will live at home while he goes to college, but Jeff is actively trying to prepare him for life on his own. While driving may have recently been ruled out as an option for him, Nicolas plans to pursue a career as a history teacher. His dad said, “he has options available to him. A large part of his therapies try to make him as self-sufficient as possible.”
With Nicolas having worked since he was seven years old and his frequent visits to doctors, therapists, and specialists, he’s very confident talking to adults. He has gone up to six months without a fall or injury due to his disability. Even with that growing ability, there is still a level of concern that a father has for their children. “As a former Scout, I’d think a lot about preparedness—in L.A. that meant earthquakes—and whether I would carry him or put him in a stroller,” Jeff said. “If the roads were jammed or the neighborhood on fire, we’re going to get you to a safe place.” It was also helpful to often have a younger-but-bigger brother around for additional assistance.
“Because he had to rely on so many people for so long, we may be quicker to help him put on socks and shoes, but he can do it,” Jeff said. “If we have the time to get out the door, I’m going to let him do it.” Getting out of his own door is one challenge, but finding accessibility and inclusivity in the world around him has been a difficult challenge for Jeff to coach his son through: “disability can be isolating. If someone’s house is not accessible, he’s not getting an invitation to the birthday party.” There are public accessibility issues to contend with as well. There have been events and activities the Noblitts have abandoned because there was no space to safely unload a wheelchair.
Jeff used carrying backpacks and strollers—traditional and jogging—when necessary because “that’s what we have to do to make the world accessible.” That effort has not gone without criticism from strangers. “There’s ignorance,” Jeff said. “My son was in a stroller, and someone called him lazy and said we should get him out of the stroller. However, we choose to pick our battles and ignore ignorance.”
He had plans to take his message of inclusivity and accessibility to a national audience, but
complicating factors made this a challenge. “On the last day the world was open in 2020, I auditioned for Jeopardy! as Jeff told the story. “I was supposed to go on with Alex Trebek, but he passed away the day before I was to record. Later, I was rebooked during the run of guest hosts. In my pre-interview, we talked about my family and inclusion, and that made it to air when I finished second on the show.” Jeff considers inclusion something of a family motto, even using it as their license plate on the wheelchair-accessible van they drove in California.
Accessibility has presented challenges, but has not been a limitation for the family. “Travel has been a big part of their upbringing,” Jeff said. In his early life, he traveled around the country and was fortunate to have lived numerous places, including spending his senior year of college studying in Rome. His wife studied abroad in London. “For kids with disabilities, road trips are great. Flights have gotten more comfortable, but we were pretty nervous for a while. Getting around New York City was a big question,” said Jeff.
“We’ve always taken crazy long road trips in the summer,” he continued. “From Illinois, we’d go to Minnesota and South Dakota and the big national parks. One year, we went from Los Angeles to Missouri and Minnesota and then looped through Montana. We got halfway out from Boise, headed back to L.A., and stopped in a very small town in Nevada. They didn’t have an accessible hotel room available, so we just kept driving another 8 hours to our home in Northridge. That was a very long 16 hours in the car.”
“It’s like you experience things together and that shared experience imprints on them,” Jeff said. “It gets the kids off their screens a little bit, not to sound like an old Gen Xer.”
Imprinting and togetherness don’t always require thousands of miles on the road. According to Eliza, one of the best things about her family is the time around the dinner table. She liked that “we always eat at the table.” Jeff said that it wasn’t necessarily an intentional family decision, just one that came together and they’ve never left. Cooking was a bond for him and Natalie, a former editor at a gourmet food magazine. Even the meals that aren’t gourmet can be a hit. “We didn’t have rehearsal last night, so I was cooking, and I thought it was kind of a disaster,” Jeff said. “But the kids loved it.” He admitted, though, that after dinner everyone likes to take some space in their separate rooms before coming back together, usually to watch a show.
“Nic got the Criterion Channel subscription,” said Jeff, “so we can watch classic films together as actors.” Nate prefers attending live music, so Jeff recently took both boys to Stanley’s Barbecue for a show—of a band Jeff was familiar with—and Nicolas ended up wanting a shirt and CD.
“Fatherhood is quite the journey. All three kids are established as individuals,” he said. “They’ve just picked up on different characteristics.”