LEWIS NEWTON - A GOOD NEIGHBOR

My neighbor Lew Newton passed away November 29, 2025 at the age of 94.   Lew and his wife Christine moved here in 1997 from Illinois to be closer to their older daughter, who lived on 10 acres with her husband at the end of the upper road on the top of the ridge.   Lew and Christine purchased a two story house at the end of the lower road that is above my place.   The older daughter and her husband sold their place and moved back east some time in 1999 or 2000.  The younger daughter lived in Eugene and would visit her parents on weekends.   Christine died 9 or 10 years ago leaving Lew by himself.   Lew had been a naval corpsman in the Korean War and made frequent trips to the Roseburg VA for his medical needs.   I suspect he had some PTSD from his experience in the war.    Lew was a helpful neighbor and any conversation with him he would end it by saying, "if you need help give me a call."   He was hard of hearing and rarely answered his phone due to his hearing loss.  Lew had a Kubota tractor that he would patch pot holes on the road with and at times helped me move down trees on our property.    I did help him out with falling some windthrown trees on his property and brushed his road once.   He had some near misses with his tractor, probably more than any us know about.   I remember hearing his tractor coming downhill onto an old tractor trail along the north boundary of our place.   As he drove down onto our driveway, I was puzzled by his appearance since there is no connecting road or trail on the property above us.   He told me he had run off the road on the 10 acres above that goes out to his house.   Knowing he could not get the tractor back up to the road he drove it down through the brush to the old tractor road that he knew was there.   He was a stubborn man hardly ever asking for help.   Seven or eight years ago he was using a ladder to clean the rain gutters on his two story house and fell.   He managed to call the ambulance for help.    His youngest daughter was staying with when she notice he was not doing good a day or two before he died.   She was going to take him to the hospital and he said NO, so she called the ambulance that took him to the VA hospital where he died the next day from a stoke.   Lew would have been 95 on December 9th.  Good neighbors like Lew are hard to come bye.