Starting a life: Part one of the story of Marion Newman
By Virginia Florey
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"Life is made up, not of great sacrifices or duties, but of little things, in which smiles and kindness and small obligations, given habitually, are what win and preserve the heart and secure comfort."
Sr. H. Davy
She was right. Raising six children on a pastor's salary. Working nights while her husband was in seminary to keep their little family financially afloat. Moving from town to town as her husband received calls from different churches. Life was never predictable as the young couple adjusted to a life spent in the ministry but it's a life she would choose all over again if she had the opportunity.
Marion Newman was born Marion Cox to George and Annitha Cox in Milwaukee, Wis. and three years later they welcomed a baby son they named Raymond. The country was in a time of prosperity and people were optimistic about the future. But when Marion was 7 and Raymond was 4, their mother Annitha died. Marion's grandmother, Marie Thiede, took her granddaughter to live with her. Remembering that time, Marion said, "She was going to take over." For the next two years Marion lived with her grandmother.
"She influenced my life greatly," Marion said. Born in Denmark, Marie Thiede married a young German man and their marriage produced five sons. After her husband's death, Marie remarried and that marriage produced two daughters and four sons. The daughters were named Sylvia and Annitha because as Marie said, "I can't give my daughters anything but fancy names." By the time Marion went to live with her grandmother, Marie was a widow, raising her family alone.
Marion and Raymond grew up in the Lutheran church, attendinga Lutheran day school and Lutheran high school. Then Marion enrolled at Lutheran Teachers College in New Ulm, Minn. Raymond served in the Marines in Korea and later enrolled in the Springfield Seminary becoming a WELS missionary in Africa for about thirty years.
Desperate for teachers at the time, the Synodical Conference extended a Divine Call to Marion to teach in Benton Harbor. Now just 18-years-old, she became the teacher for the Kindergarten, first and second grades at St. Matthews. Deciding to join the choir resulted in meeting the young man she would marry two years later, Leonard Newman. When Leonard saw Marion in choir, he said, "Who's the new girl?"
Leonard was the son of August and Mary Newman who had grown up in the Ukraine, part of the group of Germans called the Volga Deutsche. Their families were descendants of the Germans who had been given free farmland by Catherine the Great of Russia, herself a German princess before marrying Peter III of Russia. The Germans were noted for their farming skills which Russian peasants lacked. Catherine also was shrewd enough to use the German colonists as a buffer zone between the Russian people and the nomads to the east of Russia.
By the time August and Mary were young adults, war was threatening and the young German men were the first to be conscripted into the Russian army. To escape conscription August and Mary were able to relocate to Canada where they had four children. Newman relatives who lived in Chicago told the young couple that work was plentiful in a town called Benton Harbor. August and Mary uprooted their four children from Canada and made the move to Michigan. There they had two more sons, Leonard and Ruben. Pastor Newman enjoyed telling people that his father was a carpenter and his mother's name was Mary. Both assertions true. The Newman family lived at 317 Britain St. in Benton Harbor.
When Marion met Leonard at St. Matthews in Benton Harbor, he was on the cusp of deciding on his future career. God had been calling him for sometime to serve in the ministry and when he was 22 he "finally decided to listen to God's calling." Len attended Seminary for one year while engaged to Marion and when she was 19 and he was 23 they were married at Marion's home church, Good Shepherd, in a suburb of Milwaukee now known as West Allis.
"We didn't have a car or furniture. We borrowed a car from Len's brother to drive to Springfield, Ill., so we could buy some furniture at an auction," Marion said. The newly married couple moved to Springfield, living in government housing while Len was in school at the Synodical Conference College in Springfield, Miss. At this time both the Missouri Synod and Wisconsin Synod were in agreement with church doctrine. Later the two separated, with the Missouri Synod Seminary being called Concordia and the Wisconsin Synod Seminary became centered in Mequon, Wis.
With no money to buy a car, Len found a bike he could buy for $2, painted it black, and pedaled it back and forth to classes, securely chaining it to the porch railing each night The bike was named Black Beauty.
With Len still in Seminary, the young couple welcomed their first child, a daughter, Mary. With a new baby, Marion couldn't teach so she babysat other children to add to their always meager finances . Later on, she worked at Sangamo Electric at night while Pastor took care of their two children, Billy having been born two years after Mary. Marion worked on a bench lathe next to a pounding drill press doing work for the Navy.
Part II will publish in two weeks.
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GJ - This brings back happy memories. We were just talking about the Newmans while our grandchildren were watching the geese at a park near our home in Bella Vista.The geese were remarkably tame at the park, allowing children to pet them.
LI remembered Leonard talking him into approaching a goose on her nest, near the Newmans' home in the wild. The goose took after LI, flailing him with her iron-bar like wings. We had a big laugh about it.
Leonard was a traditional LCMS pastor. The liberal LCMS pastors called him "Loveless Leonard" for being a real pastor instead of a compromising pal. He took over a broken parish in the area, previously served by a man who split the church over anti-Semitism, and built it up through the Word and traditional services.
The Leonards were frugal, often saying "Make do or do without."
Leonard was my entry into the old Synodical Conference. I began by being a member of his church and applying in the Michigan District. I went to Ft. Wayne for classes, met Herman Otten at CN headquarters, and visited the LCMS Indianapolis convention, where Bohlmann was re-elected. Indianapolis convinced us not to continue with Missouri, but try WELS.
The irony is that my ELS and WELS contacts, Kincaid Smith and John Lawrenz, were both Church Growthers. Smith said, "My DMin at Ft. Wayne was all Church Growth." That program was developed under Robert Preus, whose faculty endorsed "Church Grwoth principles." Lawrenz outted himself when he wrote material for WELS cell groups and posted on Church and Change's not-so-secret listserve.
