Friday, September 11, 2009

I Remember Chris Newton

Eight years ago today, my friend Christopher Cairo Newton was killed when the plane on which he was a passenger was hijacked by religious fanatics and crashed into the Pentagon. He was 12 days shy of his 39th birthday. He had just moved with his family to Virginia as CEO of a company called Work Life Benefits, and was apparently returning back to Orange Country to tie up loose ends, which I understand included retrieving the family dog.

He was survived by his wife, Amy, his two children, Michael and Sarah, his sister Ann-Elizabeth Newton Rueppel, his brother Steven, and his parents, Michael and Barbara Newton.

At the time of his death, I hadn't seen Chris in about nine or ten years. When we'd last seen each other, we talked about his being (or becoming, the details are hazy) a graduate student at UCLA's Anderson School of Management, going for his MBA. He hadn't been married that long, and he had just his son at the time. We played low-stakes poker at our friend Steve Kramer's apartment in Anaheim. Before that night, Chris and I had not seen each other for a few years, as we'd left high school, college and had started families of our own. But we were not like strangers on that night. We laughed and carried on like kids downstairs at our parents' houses staying up late and not caring if we woke them up at 2 am.

I heard about Chris's death three days after the event, while going over a list of victims on the internet. I called my friend Steve, who confirmed it was true. For the preceding three days I had felt so much pain, crying in the car to and from work, and missing Lisa terribly when we were not together, but now I'd descended into what felt like hell as the whole tragedy hit me in my home. Chris and I lived two blocks away from each other. We'd spent the night at each other's homes, worked on projects together, sang in the choir, acted in school plays, rode and raced our bikes around the neighborhood, played poker till morning, and watched the sun come up after prom and grad night.

I confess that my friendship with Chris initially was a ploy on my part. I had met his younger sister and I was, as my friends at the time will attest, utterly and annoyingly smitten. She was the cutest girl I'd ever met and I wanted to be around her as much as possible. So I befriended Chris to get closer to her. But by the time Ann-Elizabeth had made it clear she wanted nothing to do with me, I had already grown extremely fond of Chris, and soon much of my obsession with his sister fell away.

But on 9/14/2001, I couldn't move. Couldn't concentrate, couldn't think straight. My work suffered and felt meaningless to me. Regret for the years that I hadn't tried harder to stay in touch with him suddenly gripped me. I so wanted him alive again so I could tell him I cared, that I missed him.

About the only thing that reassured me that I was still alive was my love for my wife. It was during this time that we conceived our son, Max. I have read that there was a lot of lovemaking going on right after 9/11. Certainly makes sense to me.

Eight years later, Facebook has returned to me many of the friends that Chris and I shared in high school: Jenny Dolan. Jeff Miller. Jeff Nemhauser. George Hooper. Steve Rima. Lyndra Seely. Colleen Robinett. Marilyn Mallari. Mike Gilmore. Andy Murphy. James Moore. Betsy Cardner. Titus "Ty" Levi.

And last month I was overjoyed at seeing some of them and many of their husbands and wives at a charity golf tournament. An aside -- Yeah, I know, ME golfing is like Rush Limbaugh not being an asshole; just doesn't happen. (hey, this is a political blog, after all!)

To see the family again after all this time, to see his daughter now 15 years old and hear that his son was about to enroll in Annapolis. To see Ann-Elizabeth in her mid-forties, no longer the cute teenager but now a poised, stunning woman, and with her three beautiful girls. To see Steven with wrinkles and gray hair when he was only 11 when we'd graduated high school. It was such a treat.

But that mini-reunion has made this particular 9/11 more poignant for me, more profound, and more immediate all over again. I started my day saying a prayer for Chris and his family, and by loving my wife and children just a little more. By the time I got to see them again after work, I was feeling a small hole in myself that needed filling up. I kissed them all a little more urgently.

And of course, I am thinking. My boys have never known a world without 9/11 and its aftermath. To them, the world as it is represents the baseline of their innocence. We have, of course, sheltered them from the reality of that day, but they both know about the wars we fight now. They both know how urgently we fought to elect Barack Obama because he represented hope over fear. And as they grow older, I pray that they never have to experience what we all did that terrible day of madness.

Today, I remember Chris Newton.

1 comment:

David De Grazia said...

Thank you for sharing, Eric! My heart truly broke also when I heard about Chris.

One summer night during 1979, Andy and I spent the night at the Newton's. The three of us talked about heaven... "What do you think it will be like?"

Chris knows and one day I hope we will all be there.
Blessings.

David De Grazia