It is with great sadness that I share that Noel L. Silverman, longtime legal counsel of the Little House Heritage Trust, passed away on 14 April 2026. He lived a long and fruitful life, and I am proud to have called him my friend for the last fifteen years. Noel represented the Wilder trust since its founding in 1995 until he retired in 2025. Before that, he was attorney for Roger MacBride, Rose Wilder Lane’s heir. He served as a dedicated steward to the literary heritage that is contained in the Little House series of Laura Ingalls Wilder and the novels and works of Lane. I remember him telling a story that illustrated his complete devotion to the trust that had been assigned to him. He admitted that in an impromptu setting while on a cruise he had inadvertently introduced himself as Laura Ingalls Wilder—a telling mistake. For many of us in the world of Wilder scholarship, he was indeed the face of Wilder. Noel served as the gatekeeper to anyone wanting permission to quote from or reproduce Wilder’s and Lane’s works.
I met Noel just that way, asking the Trust’s permission to publish Wilder’s unpublished memoir, “Pioneer Girl,” and the manuscripts associated with it. Over the years, I came to know him and his wife, Tanya Melich. They were a fascinating couple, who lived and worked in the heart of Manhattan. Noel had graduated from Brown University and Harvard Law School and was a man of many talents. He worked for a time as a jazz musician and maintained his love for and involvement in the world of jazz all his life. My husband and I were honored to attend his birthday parties as he attained his ninth decade. On one of those occasions, we met the author and illustrator Brian O. Selznick, best known for his 2007 novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret—just one of the talented people whom Noel represented through the years. Noel and Tanya invited us into their home again when we were celebrating my birthday in New York last fall. As always, their conversation was lively and provocative, ranging from politics to philosophy to art.
As many of us know, however, Noel’s professionalism could be intimidating. The first few times I talked to him, I literally stuttered my way through the discussion. But he was always kind to me, even though he was no nonsense when it came to business—and Wilder was his business. He was serious and thoughtful about her legacy. When I asked him if he could explain Wilder’s enduring appeal to readers, he told me: “Wilder’s ongoing popularity is largely a consequence of the message she conveyed, although it was more often than not conveyed subliminally. Her stories take you with her and deliver you to a place where, without having listened to a lecture, you recognize that you bear principal responsibility for the things over which you exercise control, and that you often have more influence over those things than you perhaps first imagined. Action is important. Decency is important. Perseverance works. Reciprocity works. Compassion works.”1
While I will miss him in the years to come, I am deeply grateful to have walked alongside him for a time and to have shared his vision of Wilder. May he rest in peace.
Noel Silverman speaks at the South Dakota State Historical Society’s annual meeting in Sioux Falls, 2017.
––Nancy Tystad Koupal
1. Silverman, “Her Stories Take You with Her: The Lasting Appeal of Laura Ingalls Wilder,” in Pioneer Girl Perspectives: Exploring Laura Ingalls Wilder, ed. Nancy Tystad Koupal (Pierre: South Dakota Historical Society Press, 2017), p. 141.