Christopher Carl Newton
Christopher Carl Newton was born on February 8, 1942, to San Francisco Examiner television columnist and radio personality Dwight Newton and artist Lillian “Ronnie” Newton. His early years were spent roaming the delights of the Outer Richmond District of San Francisco- Golden Gate Park, Sutro Heights, Playland at the Beach. He attended St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic School and loved his friends and the wonderful nuns that taught there. At age six, he contracted rheumatic fever which damaged his aortic heart valve, leading to four open heart valve replacement surgeries over his lifetime. Doctors didn’t think he would live to adulthood, but his amazingly strong heart gifted him with eighty-three years of a very blessed life.
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