Valley says goodbye to longtime Wasilla benefactor

WASILLA — Most remember Harold Sherwood Newcomb for his more than a half-century of community service. For his son, Randall, Newcomb he was much more.

“I knew him as a great dad, fearless leader and patriotic American,” Randall said in a prepared statement read by Bert Hall, a longtime friend of Harold Newcomb. They were among about 200 family and friends to gather Saturday at the Curtis D. Menard Memorial Sports Center to celebrate the life of Harold Newcomb. A former two-time Wasilla mayor, Mat-Su Borough assemblyman and school board member, Harold Newcomb died May 7 at age 83.

Although Newcomb has been celebrated for his community service, Randall said his father had a profound influence on him in other ways.

“His stories about military service convinced me at an early age to become a soldier as well, serving 20 years in the U.S. Army,” he said.

When Harold Newcomb was nearing his 70th birthday, Randall said he and his siblings wrote down their thoughts about their father.

“I wrote about how he became my (definition of) a hero to me, not only for what he had done throughout his life, but also for who he was,” he said.

Randall also recalled a witty sense of humor that helped round out his father’s personality. As a kid riding with his father down the Glenn Highway, they saw a sign that read “Falling Rock.”

“I asked dad what that meant, and what he told me was that long ago an Indian who liked to travel had a name, and he told me anywhere that sign was placed, that was where Falling Rock was spotted,” Randall said. “Some years later on another road I saw the same sign. I commented that Falling Rock guy sure does get around. I believe my dad got a kick out of that.”

Harold Newcomb also got a kick out of being around his children, grandchildren and their friends, said his daughter, Robin Ouellette, also through a prepared statement read by Hall.

“My first thoughts are about how strong he was,” she said. “When I was little, he owned a hardware store. Hauling the feed and lumber made him pretty tough. In my eyes, he could do anything.”

As tough as he was, Harold Newcomb also was known to love music and poetry, and would often have a song or poem for different situations, Ouellette said. She also said that when she or her siblings would bring friends home, “Dad was tickled when they would become comfortable enough to go to the fridge and get what they want.”

His tireless work ethic was augmented by a personal charm that often made Harold Newcomb hard to ignore, she said. He was a poet, a singer and a flirt.

“Dad had a poem or song for every occasion, and no female was safe from his flirting,” she said.

For a man with hard and humble beginnings, that Harold Newcomb maintained a perpetual optimism was remarkable, Hall said. As a longtime friend, Hall gave the eulogy and shared how Harold Newcomb would recount his youth as “desperate times.”

His father was the son of a coal miner and a World War I veteran, his mother the daughter of a sharecropper. Often, his parents would go without food so the children could eat. He would describe the different homes he lived in as well, Hall said.

“One was a shack, another was a sorry place in the slums, another an old run-down shack with no indoor plumbing, or another a run-down old place,” Hall said.

Hall and Newcomb were experiencing health problems in the recent past and both were undergoing dialysis. Hall would go early in the morning, Newcomb later, and they would talk to fill the time. Hall said Newcomb told him about an abusive father who was out of work and would beat his mother, which led to a divorce. She would remarry to a sharecropper, and at age 13 they moved to sharecrop a farm in Alabama.

“He worried often about being placed in a kids’ home,” Hall recounted. A year after moving to Alabama, he got a chance to earn some money working in Ohio. When he returned to Alabama after a summer of work, he found his mother and family gone.

“He looked at that house, got back on the train and went back to Ohio,” Hall said. “He calls that his ‘running away time.’”

In retrospect, that was one of many turning points in Harold Newcomb’s life, Hall said. He found work with a kindly man who agreed to hire him on the condition that he go back to school. After high school, he joined the Army, and it was his military service that brought him to Alaska.

Believing he was bound for Egypt, Newcomb didn’t know until he got on a boat in Seattle that he was actually on his way to Whittier, en route to Fort Richardson, Hall recounted. After his four years were up, he bounced around Southcentral a little and settled in Wasilla with a job at Wasilla Bar.

He met his wife of 50 years, Patricia, the daughter of Matanuska Colony parents. The rest, Hall said, was history.

“Harold was a mover and shaker,” he said. “There was nothing that could be possibly improved in Wasilla that Harold did not support. He cared about the people and had a dedication for the Valley. If it could be done, he was the one to lead the way. If it couldn’t be done, he’d try anyway.”

Among those attending Saturday’s celebration of life were representatives of the Valley’s emergency response services in consideration of Newcomb’s role as a founding member of the Wasilla Ambulance and Fire Department. Many who had been holding back tears failed when the service ended with local dispatchers issuing a final pageout at 3:15 p.m. for Newcomb over Valley emergency band radio.

Those responders in attendance turned up their radios so the crowd could hear: “All clear, 15:13.”

Contact reporter Greg Johnson at greg.johnson@frontiersman.com or 352-2269.