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Services Held for Former Covenant Minister Lester Newman
BEVERLY, MA (August 20, 2003) - Funeral services were held on July 26 for
Lester Newman, a former Covenant minister who served as a professor and
the first dean of the chapel at Endicott College near Boston.
The 84-year-old Newman died of pneumonia July 21 at Blueberry Hill
Health Care in Beverly. He had lived in nearby Manchester for many years.
According to an obituary in the Boston Globe, Newman was the youngest of
five boys and was born on September 9, 1918. While growing up in Crystal
Lake, Illinois, he and his brothers helped the family during the
Depression by delivering papers, his wife, Alice Viola (Granstrom)
Newman told the Globe.
At Crystal Lake High School, Newman was known as ''Scrapper'' for his
fierce play on the school's football team. He was also an avid golfer,
and in his early 20s once played 54 holes of golf in one day with his
brothers.
Newman attended Wheaton College in Illinois, then studied for the
ministry at North Park Seminary. He met Alice, who would become his wife
of 59 years, at a church in Evanston, Illinois, where she played piano
and sang in the church choir. The two were married in August 1944, and
spent the first two years of their marriage living in a small cabin in
northern Wisconsin, where he worked at two churches - Community Covenant
Church in Conover and Community Covenant Church in Sayner - from 1944 to
1946.
From 1946 to 1952, Newman served the Evangelical Covenant Church of
Elgin, Illinois. He was ordained during the 1949 Covenant Annual Meeting
at Trinity Church in Boston. In 1952, Newman became pastor of the
Johnson Street Covenant Church, where he served for six years. Newman
then began teaching Sociology at Endicott College, eventually becoming
dean of the chapel. While at Endicott, he served as a youth program
leader and pastor of the former North Saugus Community Church.
After retiring 1983, he served several interim pastorates and substitute
taught at Manchester High School until he suffered a stroke in 1995.
In addition to his wife, Newman is survived by sons Steven and Thomas
and daughters Susan (Wriggins) and Sally and 10 grandchildren.
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