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The Queen Bed & Breakfast
The Queen Bed & Breakfast
Nancy Noll
Nancy Noll
For a little dose of amazement or a fascinating story, look no further than The Queen BnB and the lady that owns it. Both are a delightful treasure to our small community. So if you're planning a staycation or having friends visiting town, The Queen is a great destination spot.
Did you grow up in Bellefonte? If not where and how did you end up in Bellefonte?
I was born in an old farm house with no running water nor electricity. Went to the same one room school house my mother went to just 20 miles outside the city of Harrisburg. Proud to say I am too old to be a “Baby Boomer”. Came to Penn State in 1963 to become a High School home economics teacher because I was told I couldn’t be a doctor, because I was a girl.
You own and run The Queen BnB. How did that come about?
50 years ago on June 16, my then husband and our son moved into a semi habitable haunted house on Linn Street. Our plan was to put 5 years of sweat equity into the place and flip it for 50 acres of land in the country. Hopefully there would be an old shack we could live in while we built a geodesic dome and we would be hippies for the rest of our life. Unfortunately, that husband left right on cue but our son and I stayed on. With the help of a new husband, we transformed that haunted house into what is today known as “The Queen”. 28 years ago, I walked off my corporate job to take back my soul. Was going to do nothing but that for 6 months, but 3 months later, I was working at a travel agency, running a Nordic Track store, starting a decorating business, and my neighbor and friend was sending overflow from her bed and breakfast to me. When I finally realized I couldn’t do it all, the bed and breakfast won.
You’ve had many interesting guests over the years. Can you tell us about some of them?
So one fellow was moving from Missouri to Manhattan for a new job. When questioned about his new job, he simply said. “Oh, I’ll be heading up 3 of Amazon’s companies, including the drone.”
Many Bellefonte folk have seen the brass plaque honoring the police officer shot near the Bellefonte Diamond in 1971. Last fall the shooter’s son visited me and shared a copy of his best seller book, “The Unlucky Sperm Cell”. He is a very successful business man in Las Vegas whom I have seen on talk shows. The premise of his book is “You make your own choices” Don’t blame it on your sperm.
A very attractive woman was talking with me about the Holocaust when she slipped up to her room to bring me a book about a little girl who was just two years old when Poland was invaded by the Germans. The book tells the story of how this girl survived the Holocaust while living just one mile from the largest concentration camp in Poland. She was the little girl.
I have an extensive collection of wonderful books written by guests. My guests enhance my life with their stories and inspire me to travel the world.
You have lived an interesting life full of adventure, what are some of the places you have lived and things you have done?
Wow! Long story. I never left central PA until I got to Penn State. My second summer, I found a job in Cape May, NJ. Learned to surf and made enough to pay my room board and expenses for school. Luckily, I had a full tuition scholarship. The next summer, I took off for Boston with no job waiting and no place to live. 24 hours after arriving, both problems were solved. The next spring, Penn State sent me off to the Merrill –Palmer Institute in Detroit to do an internship with the Detroit
Police Department in the ghettos. That’s where I learned not to judge another person unless I walked in their shoes. And that if I walked in their shoes, I wouldn’t want to judge them. You should know that Penn State was mostly white in the “60’s and the town I grew up in was 99% white Anglo-Saxon protestant. Penn State put me on staff two weeks before graduation so I wouldn’t take another job. Nine months later I hopped on a plane and took off for Japan for two years.
Since then I have traveled to Kenya for a safari, scuba dived in Honduras, followed the Obamas around in Cuba, met Tom Sellick in Hawaii, spent Christmas Day dancing for a penguin in Antarctica, dined at the Moulin Rouge in Paris, walked the sands of Normandy, taught English in the Czech Republic, spent Easter Sunday in the bulb gardens of Holland, hiked the Canadian Rockies, rafted the Colorado River, sailed the Queen Mary II, visited numerous Caribbean Islands, drank great beer in Germany, saw the Sistine Chapel cleaned on one half and dirty on the other, toured masques in Turkey, Skied Teine Olympia, visited pyramids in Egypt, made several trips to Guatemala for social justice work, restored housing in Gulfport after Katrina, did a mission trip to Costa Rica, sipped Bacardi in Puerto Rico, explored ruins in Mexico, provided Red Cross disaster relief in seven states, won a downriver white water canoe race, learned to bench press my own body weight and traveled through the locks of the Panama canal.
What do you want to see in Bellefonte in the next 5 years?
A continued commitment to historic preservation. Our future lies clearly in our past. To ensure the future of both humanity and our world, I truly hope there will an effort to educate every citizen about what we can each do to protect and preserve nature and our environment.
Anything you want to say to the Bellefonte Community?
Keep up the good work. I am so proud of you. Nowhere I’ve been compares to the joy and pleasure I have had living in Bellefonte!
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