Father’s Day

Mack Andrew Newton Jr 1951 / Photo by Betty Newton

My mother divorced my biological father, Ira (Ike) Payne, when I was four. Divorce was rare in those days, but Betty was ahead of her time. She was an RN with a degree in nursing from the University of Rochester. She started a convalescence home for the elderly in Bath, New York, my birthplace, and ran it successfully until her divorce in 1947, a year after Ike returned from World War II with a Purple Heart. I have only one memory of him, and it isn’t a good one. I never saw him again.

Until she remarried, we lived with my grandmother and my two uncles, also newly returned from the War, and then, later, we shared the upstairs of a farm house in Chapin, New York near the Canadaigua VA hospital where she worked as a nurse. They were difficult times for both of us. I attended a one-room school house for grades one through seven, taught by Miss Harrison, who was, in my eyes, quite ancient and terrifying. Betty worked the nightshift so she could be home during the day. I spent each night alone, falling asleep to the sound of the Grand Old Opry booming from the radio downstairs, where our landlords, the DeCook family lived.

In 1951, my mother met Mack Newton Jr. A year later, they were married in Chestertown, Maryland by a justice of the peace. I was eight-years-old. They spent their brief honeymoon in Ocean City, Maryland, while I stayed with Mack’s parents on a dairy farm next to the Chesapeake Bay. And so began my life with a new father, a relationship that spanned sixty-seven years until his death in 2018.

I was grateful to have a father and called him ‘Dad’ from the beginning. After their marriage, we moved to Salisbury, Maryland, and life was good again. Mack worked at Koontz diary as a chemist, testing milk for butterfat content and overseeing production. My mother worked nights at the local hospital. Together, they restored a run-down two story house on the outskirts of town, working late into the night scraping wallpaper, painting and remodeling nearly every square foot.

Soon, my brother Kevin was born, followed by my sister, Lynn, who took her life at the age of 49. But, in those days, we enjoyed the post war boom and prospered.

During the summer of my twelfth year, my name was legally changed from Stephen Ira Payne to Stephen Andrew Newton. When I returned to school in the fall, I left behind my elementary school friends and entered Junior High—grades seven to nine. No one remembered my former self. I was reborn. I no longer had to tell my friends my real father died in the war.

Although I didn’t realize it back then, Mack was an artist. He artfully chronicled our early years with a 16 mm film camera and a simple 35 mm camera. For years, we looked forward to watching Kodachrome slides and 16 mm projections of our lives, which became our shared memories of who we were then. One night Mack and I went to the end of Salisbury’s main street and carried his camera and tripod up a hill onto a train trestle over the highway, where he took time exposures of the downtown scene below. When I started writing and directing my own films, so many years later, I realized that it was Mack who must have inspired me.

I can’t remember a time I ever saw Mack sitting down. From the moment he arrived home from work, he was busy in his workshop. He restored a vintage Triumph motorcycle and sidecar. He tore apart a ‘49 Studebaker and rebuilt it, and then, sold it and tore it down agin, sending each part to a collector in California. He taught himself navigation and bought a Windmill sailboat. He studied for weeks to become a dairy inspector to get a better job. He collected everything from antique toys to pocket knives.

When I started a lifestyle magazine in the eighties, he contributed photographs, and wore the magazine’s logo tee shirt. He never forgot my birthday, or failed to celebrate my few accomplishments. He was a father to me, even when I was less than a son to him.

When she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, he took care of my mother at home for ten years until she died in his arms in 1996. When his pastor arrived that night, he praised Mack for his loving care for more than a decade. My father replied, “Isn’t that what you do when you love someone?”

I visited my father on the eve of my mother’s memorial service and asked him what was his happiest memory of their life together. He thought for a while. “We were visiting New England one fall,” he said, “back when I had the Austin Healey convertible. We were driving by an apple orchard, and your mother said, ‘Mack, pick me an apple.’ I drove right into the orchard and parked under one of the trees. I reached up and plucked down an apple for her.”

It takes a special man willing to raise another man’s child. Mack was indeed one of a kind.

Happy Father’s day, Dad.