'I was LDS already but I didn't know it'
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War veterans are often honored for the trying circumstances they endured while serving their country. However, for some veterans their recollections of war are not the only difficult memories. Sometimes, the pangs of longing for seemingly simple life events they did not get to experience because of military service can be just as difficult to live with.
Until recently, such had been the case for Henry "Pete" Newman, a World War II Navy veteran living in the Pleasant Grove Utah West Stake. Brother Newman left high school in Minnesota at the end of his junior year to enter the U.S. Navy. Although he finished his graduation requirements a few years later, his high school did not award him a diploma. Brother Newman never participated in a graduation ceremony, either.
The memory has not only been difficult, it also has been rehashed with each graduation in his family.
"I had been through the experience of watching each of my children and grandchildren graduate one by one, and each time I was wishing I was in their shoes having my graduation," he said.
But all that changed on June 4, when he donned a cap and gown for the very first time and walked across the stage of the Brighton High School graduation in West Valley, Utah, together with his graduate grandson, Jonathan Slack.
The thought of receiving a high school diploma was one that he had given up long ago. After the long-anticipated graduation, Brother Newman used words like "ecstatic" and "honored" to describe his feelings after "representing all veterans who went off to war and never had the chance to graduate."
"It was a very full day for me. It was fruition of 63 years of waiting for a piece of paper," he said.
Brother Newman's decision to serve in the navy left him with painful memories. However, it was also while in the Navy that he also began to realize that there might be more to life.
Growing up, Brother Newman was religious but not a member of the Church. It was during his four-year hitch in the Navy that he first began to notice how his standards set him apart. Other officers were big drinkers but he wanted no part of it.
"In my heart I was LDS already but I didn't know it," he said.
After his service in the Navy, a couple careers in graphic arts and going through a divorce, he finally familiarized himself with the Church in 1986. After raising three children and being married for 23 years, he found himself in California attending a Divorce Recovery Workshop.
After noticing Caroline, a fellow divorcee who had raised four children in her 21-year marriage, he asked her on a date to Disneyland. While talking about their past marriages, he discovered that she was a member of the Church. The topic of the temple came up and it piqued his curiosity, so much so that at the end of the date instead of asking for a good night kiss he was asking for more information about the Church.
The little information she gave him was only enough to whet his appetite. Soon after he began meeting with the missionaries. The process of teaching the discussions was over almost as soon as it began and culminated with his baptism on April 16, 1987.
For Brother Newman, the conversion came easy. The harder part was convincing Caroline she should marry him. After much cajolement, she happily conceded and the two were sealed in the Los Angeles California Temple on January 21, 1989.
It is the gospel that has changed Brother Newman's life and brought his family together. Living the gospel, Brother Newman has fit right into the family such that Caroline's children don't even consider him their stepfather but rather the patriarch of their eternal family.
"He's a very righteous man and he's blessed the lives of our children and now grandchildren. He has been a righteous priesthood holder," said Sister Newman's daughter Julie Slack. "Our family went through a lot of pain until this man entered our lives."
Since his conversion, he has recognized the importance of the gospel and has tried to share it with others at every opportunity. Many of these opportunities have come in the form of Church callings as he has served as a ward mission leader, ward Sunday School president and a family history center missionary at the Los Angeles California Temple. He teaches with such love and conviction that, according to his stepdaughter Rebecca Duehring, "people think he has been a member of the Church his whole life."
But perhaps his best opportunity to share gospel principles has not come from one of these callings. Rather, it comes every Christmas season when he grows out and bleaches his beard, dons a red suit and puts on a different name tag — Santa Claus.
More than 40 years ago, Brother Newman started a job as a mall Santa in San Mateo, Calif. He has enjoyed that role so much that he has continued ever since. He considers it a special opportunity to talk to the children because "little children look at Santa as being someone a little bit above their parents. They'll confide in me something they won't tell Mom and Dad."
As he plays Santa the children open up and "he tries to teach them about the true meaning of Christmas. The little children are drawn to him," Sister Duehring said.
Seeing so many families experiencing divorce and other problems, it is evident to Brother Newman that the gospel, which has brought peace to his life, is the only thing that can bring peace to the children.
"The most common thing I've heard from children, and it breaks my heart every single time: 'Santa, bring my mommy and daddy back together again.' "
It is Brother Newman's hope that every child can find the peace that the gospel has helped him find. This hope has helped him have an impact in the lives of many children, with an especially great influence in the life of Sister Slack's son Jonathan. Reading together often since Jonathan's youth has led to a special connection that made sharing the graduation even more fitting.
"We attribute a lot to a grandfather that read to Jonathan over and over again and was very patient with him," said Sister Newman. "I tried to get that diploma year after year. It came when it was supposed to come. It wasn't an accident."
The family feels that Brother Newman's story will be repeated for many generations. According to Sister Slack, it will be especially important to Jonathan.
"John will have more rough roads ahead of him. Having this opportunity with his grandfather, he will be able to look back in journals and his feelings and he can draw strength from that long after his grandfather is gone," she said.
