The name Harvard, stands for leadership, excellence, and results and was inspired from my late mentor and great grandfather, G. Clifford Noble, who graduated from Harvard along with my great uncle, who helped found the Harvard Business School.   After Clifford Noble graduated, he partnered with a man named Barnes and founded the largest book store in New York City:  Barnes & Noble Book Stores.

"G. Clifford Noble was a dreamer, a visionary, a risk taker and an individual who, from childhood, could recognize opportunities in the most remote places and transform them into highly profitable activity."

He was a prototype of today’s entrepreneur whose efforts resulted in the founding of two legendary book companies: Barnes & Noble Book Stores and Noble & Noble Publishers, both of which are considered by many to be “The Noble Legacy”.

But my great grandfather left my family with the formula for being passionate, happy, and content, which when understood and followed by others may help them find purpose and meaning in their lives.  He believed that true joy in life comes only when we recognize that riches and professional rewards may be fleeting and short lived.  He lived his life in a way that demonstrated to others, especially to his own family members, that there is a Power greater than all of us.  He taught them that our lives are made more meaningful when we live a life that is anchored by God,  high ideals, and old-fashioned virtues.

"Clifford Noble was the patriarch of a family around whom his life revolved.  The rituals and traditions of life with them were of paramount importance to him and were indicative of the value he placed on the sharing of love, time, and space with one another." *

My mother, Betty Noble Turner, former Mayor of Corpus Christi, Texas, has written a book on his life and  "The Noble Legacy", which she just published and available at Barnes & Noble Bookstores.

He passed away before I was born, but his life, inspiration, influence and legacy lives on in my very soul.

                                                                                                  -  Randall R. Turner 

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