https://www.siliconvalley.com/2022/08/06/san-jose-mourns-the-loss-of-a-true-civic-booster/ > Few people believed in the potential of San Jose like Joe Noonan. He was a booster in the truest sense, helping to lift up community projects and events to bring people together. How committed was he? Well, he dressed up like a banana to promote the Downtown Farmers Market and like a gingerbread man to publicize Christmas in the Park. > It was his genuine, heartfelt love for his adopted city that left his friends, family and colleagues in grief when they learned he had died early Tuesday morning at age 48. While his charm and smile were with him until the end, they were just no match for neuroendocrine tumors — a rare cancer that can occur anywhere in the body, which he had been battling for more than a year.