City of Oaks Funeral Home & Cremation
Obituary
Christopher Carl Newton
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Age 83.
Died 12/04/2025.
He attended high school in San Mateo, California, and graduated from San Francisco State with a bachelor’s degree in English literature. His first marriage was to “Linda Lovely” Cartwright and soon their beautiful daughter Jennifer arrived. His second and lifelong marriage was to his soulmate, Patricia Lorenz, with whom he had two daughters, Hannah and Kirstie. Chris and Trish also hosted foreign exchange students who remain as family to this day, and welcomed many other girls into the family who needed love and care. Chris and Trish’s passion for raising awareness of human trafficking and a special concern for girls trafficked into slavery dominated their retirement years.
Chris’s main lifetime employer was AT&T, where he worked as a TV producer. He accepted the chance for a new adventure to the east coast with a transfer to New Jersey in 1983. Trish and Chris raised their girls in Clinton in a big old colonial home, learning renovation and repair skills along the way. Life outside of work included lots of hiking, reading aloud, singing and making music with his family and band The Hurricanes, summer volunteer workcamps in Starks, Maine, uncovering genealogical mysteries, teaching adult Sunday School classes, and canoeing with Trish on the river that ran by his home all the way to the ocean.
Once the kids were grown, Chris and Trish set off to walk across Europe by backpacking for a month each summer on the GR 5, a path that runs from the North Sea in the Netherlands to the southern tip of Italy. They managed to get all the way to the foot of the Alps in France before life prevented them from continuing, namely care of their own aging parents. They also walked the Coast to Coast Trail across England twice, the second time with Trish’s 80-year-old mother!
Chris and Trish found their ideal retirement locale in the South Hill neighborhood of Spokane, Washington. There Chris joined a writer’s group where he began to weave stories from his popular blog at http://ponderingpig.wordpress.com into a book that he eventually published. “The First Few Friends I Had: Love Stories from the Gone World,” is a historically significant memoir of life as a “baby beatnik” and original hippy in the San Francisco Haight Ashbury world of the 1960s.
Chris and Trish’s final years were spent in Chapel Hill, North Carolina living near family, where even in their decline they gained the deep love and affection of many. Trish preceded him in death in May 2024. They leave behind three daughters, five grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, and numerous friends and extended family around the world who will always think the Pondering Pig and his wife are the best of the best.
A memorial service will be held on Saturday, March 21, 2026, 2 pm, at Holy Trinity Anglican Church in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. All are welcome, whether in-person or live-streamed online at: https://www.youtube.com/@holytrinityanglicanchurch9924
For additional information or for service details, please reach out to the family directly.
You can share this obituary using the following address, or click the button below to share on Facebook.
City of Oaks Cremation and Funeral Home is a full-service funeral home in Raleigh, serving all of North Carolina and beyond. We provide an alternative to costly funeral homes and every day we help families in Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill and all over North Carolina make simple, affordable funeral arrangements.
Simply having to reach out to a funeral home can feel overwhelming. Our goal is to simplify the entire funeral home experience and make the process as easy as possible. We hope to eliminate any unnecessary surprises by publishing our total cost and the services we provide directly on our website. All of our obituaries are provided free of charge as a way to help families celebrate and commemorate the lives of their loved ones.
Our Promise
Apples to Apples
Just like all other licensed funeral homes in North Carolina, City of Oaks Cremation, LLC is regulated by the NC Board of Funeral Service.
The same laws that apply to the big corporate funeral homes also apply to the modest independently owned firms like ours. All crematories in North Carolina, regardless of who owns them, are inspected annually by the state and must adhere to the same rules and laws.
Genuine Care
We're committed to providing families within our community unsurpassed service before, during and after the time of loss.
Our staff will provide clear communication to your family through each step as we move forward from the original phone call notifying us of a death to the time we deliver the urn back to your family. We will treat your family with the utmost respect, as we honor the wishes of your loved one.
We promise to make this process affordable and as endurable as possible.
State Wide
Our Funeral Home is located in Wake County NC; however, we provide our services to families throughout the entire State.
Unlike other funeral homes, we don't charge an additional mileage fee. Regardless of what county you live in, we can help your family with making simple, affordable funeral arrangements. From Asheville to Wilmington, we're proud to help families statewide.
Our Services
$1196.75
Nobody likes surprise costs added in at the last minute. We guarantee you will not find any hidden charges here. We include everything you need for a simple or direct cremation. Simple, affordable and reliable. We have not changed the cost of our direct cremation service since we opened City of Oaks in 2012.
$2875.66
We offer the option of choosing how you receive your loved ones remains. Selecting our Direct Cremation with Solidified Remains option is a beautiful way to transform cremated remains into 40-60 “stones” that you can hold.
$1917.84
City of Oaks Funeral Home and Cremation provides an affordable cremation option with onsite visitation. Nobody likes surprise costs added in at the last minute. We guarantee you will not find any hidden charges here. Simple, affordable and reliable.
$1596.75
City of Oaks Funeral Home and Cremation provides an affordable cremation with a private family viewing. A private family viewing allows up to 10 immediate family members or friends to spend time with a loved one when a public visitation is not preferred.
$2497.50
An immediate burial has the same end result as a traditional burial; however, we have eliminated the extra (sometimes unnecessary) services prior to getting to the cemetery. Not everyone wants an open casket for viewing or a limousine for the family. Despite the term immediate, we can move as fast as you need or as slow as you like. This option simply allows you to save money by eliminating some of the fancy extras at the funeral home.
$6081.48
We offer the same traditional funeral services as the big corporately owned funeral homes in the area; however, we cost about half the amount. You might consider a traditional funeral service if your family is looking for an open casket visitation, a traditional church service or a funeral service in the funeral home's chapel. A traditional funeral service can be altered to fit the needs of your family.
$3033.75
This establishment is one of a select number of funeral homes who meet the criteria for providing green funeral service by the Green Burial Council; a tax-exempt, nonprofit organization working to encourage environmentally sustainability in the field of funeral service. Our Green options allow for a funeral to take place without the use of toxic and non-biodegradable materials/chemicals.
$2640.59
As an alternative to traditional cremation, City of Oaks Funeral Home also offers Aquamation. The Aquamation process, often referred to as alkaline hydrolysis, uses a solution of water and potassium hydroxide to facilitate natural decomposition.