Linda Lee Newton

Linda Lee’s favorite song was “Chantilly Lace.” She was the pretty face with blonde curls. As if scripted for a 1950s movie, she met Jesse Newton, her loving husband of 58 years, after a Friday night homecoming game in Morehead City. Linda and Jesse’s sister, Margaret Newton (Rose), were Pamlico High School cheerleaders. Jesse was 15. Linda was 17. They loved and laughed through high school, college, careers, and several towns across the Carolinas. They danced in the living room nearly every night Jesse was home. Linda taught their only child, Natalie, to “beach bop” when all Natalie wanted to do was disco. Knowing how to “shag” came in handy when Natalie followed Jesse to NC State.

Linda and Jesse spent their first year of marriage in Key West. Jesse says they were very happy there. They returned over twenty times for vacations. They shared a love of travel and reading and Bible study and spent many of their retirement days side-by-side in a corduroy La Z Boy chair reading contently. They visited the Holy Land to be baptized in the Jordan River, visited Natalie when she lived in Australia, visited the Soviet Union pre-glasnost, saw other countries and islands, travelled by cruise ship and camel and train, and generally loved a good adventure as long as it was together.

Linda had Alzheimer’s Disease the last ten years of life, but Jesse’s devotion never wavered. Natalie sold her private practice and home in Atlanta and returned to New Bern to help them the last four years. They cared for Linda at home. Natalie’s husband, Russ Davis, commuted to his job in Atlanta. Jesse danced with Linda until two weeks before her death. Jesse and Natalie and Margaret and Russ sat bedside vigil around the clock the final 14 days of Linda’s life. She was at peace.

The family is too grief stricken to hold a visitation. At the funeral they hope to see many of the wonderful people Linda touched over the years. She believed we view our funerals. The family hopes she will see family, friends, and maybe even some of her students from Pamlico (1960) and Clayton (1961-63) and Topsail (1964) High Schools. She loved them all.

Linda’s accomplishments were love, forgiveness, and virtue. Her worldly measures follow:

Linda Lee Newton was born to Robert E. Lee and Mildred McCotter Lee in Arapahoe, NC on June 21, 1936. She married Jesse Newton of Vandemere, NC on November 23, 1956. She earned a BA in French and English from Atlantic Christian College and an MA in Counseling from East Carolina University. She worked on several mission programs for United Methodist Churches in Lake Waccamaw, Durham, Boone, and New Bern, NC. She was a counselor for inner city children from Fayetteville to stay in private homes at Lake Waccamaw, taught a drug class for teenagers, was a board representative and volunteer at a church daycare facility, and served on the Board of Missions in Raleigh, NC. She was a Cub Scout leader in 1976 and established one of the first integrated Girl Scout troops in the South in 1968, serving as leader of the troop for the Lake Waccamaw area. Natalie and the other Junior Girl Scouts, Caucasian and Native American and African American, enjoyed many outings and tent camping trips. Once it was so cold that Jesse and Linda had to sleep in the car. Natalie confides that the girls stayed up all night making s-mores and telling ghost stories. Linda and Jesse actually allowed the fifth graders to vote on whether or not to stay the next night! What fifth grade girl is not going to bundle up and eat s’mores all night? Linda also served as a substitute supervisor at a Christian home for women alcoholics in Boone and as a Guardian ad Litem in New Bern. Her professional careers were as a high school teacher and social worker and also as a bookkeeper for her husband’s commercial fishing business. She is survived by .her husband, Jesse Newton, her daughter, Dr. Natalie Newton, her son-in-law Russ Davis. Also by her siblings and their spouses, Annette and Charles Kahn of Chapel Hill, Shirley Paul of Cary, Rod and Sue Lee of Bayboro, Jeff and Linda Lee of Augusta, GA, and the many lives she touched along the way.

Services will be held at Cotten Funeral Home at 3:00 PM proceeding to the Pavilion by the lake at Greenleaf Cemetery in New Bern, NC on Sunday, March 8.

Arrangements are by Cotten funeral Home.

Online condolences may be made to the family at www.cottenfuneralhome.com.