Obituary

Jeff and Shelley Bates Longtime Redwood Estates resident Nolan Thaxton Cordle was born on August 20, 1937, in Atlanta, Georgia, and passed away on December 20, 2024, at Good Samaritan Hospital in San Jose, California, at the age of 87. He was predeceased by his parents, Lewis Edward and Flora, his brother, James Edward, and by his beloved wife, Sylvia Albertina Hortensia Caballero y Bilbao Cordle, a remarkable woman with whom he spent 49 happy years before she died in 2017.

Thaxton (as he often told us, middle names were used in the South) had a tough childhood. Between illness and neglect, he was basically raised by his grandparents. While in the hospital at age eight, a nurse brought him pencils and paper to keep him amused, and he discovered his talent for drawing. At Hoke Smith High School in Atlanta, he was known as “the artist,”

painting backdrops and posters for school dances and events. One of his classmates was country singer and Grammy Award-winner Jerry Reed. One evening he was talking with the girl next door, and a 1953 pink Cadillac stopped at the curb. Elvis Presley had come to pick her up for a date, and Thaxton talked with him for a few minutes about music, which he loved. After high school, Thaxton and his friend Tommy Sykes joined the Navy, where his artistic talent led him into a military post as a corpsman, using watercolors to create illustrations of body parts.

After his discharge from the Navy, Thaxton fled the South for good and moved to San Francisco, where in December 1967, he met the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, standing next to her red Mustang convertible. Thaxton believed in love at first sight, and it was. He and Sylvia married on August 31, 1968. Thaxton took up a career in banking with First National Bank of San Jose. He progressed from repossessing vehicles to the position he loved the most, Senior Vice President of First Hawaiian Bank on Oahu, Hawai’i. Rubbing shoulders with the governor and movie stars like Tom Selleck, Jim Nabors, and James Arness, he was in his element.

The care of Sylvia’s aging parents brought them back home to San Francisco, where in the ’80s he spent several years as a financial consultant, developing the BankAmerica Card system. Today we call it VISA. During his years as a consultant, Thaxton had time to pick up his brushes again. He enjoyed painting in oils and acrylics, and sold his work at the Marco Polo Gallery in Carmel, as well as doing commissioned art for his friends. Most of all, he enjoyed outselling his rival, Thomas Kincaid. Over the years, Thaxton’s paintings were featured on several covers for the Mountain Network News, among them October 2000 (Lexington Reservoir), April 2004 (Summit Road Morning Fog), January 2010 (Garage at Holy City), and July 2011 (Pavilion at Redwood Estates).

When Thaxton realized his talents on canvas were fading, he wanted his last painting to be a portrait of Sylvia, now unfinished. They are buried together, but somewhere outside of time they are walking hand in hand, with their dogs Max and Shane at their side. A private graveside service was held on January 7 at Santa Cruz Memorial. Mass will be celebrated for him at Christ Child Catholic Church on Summit Road on Saturday, February 1.