In memoriam: Bill Newlin
February 9, 1933–December 11, 2024
By professor emerita Anne Kozak
How do we pay tribute to a man who personified life—a person who was giving, generous, supportive, and loving? Not only were the Newlins dear friends, but Bill and his wife of 69 years, Louisa Foulke Newlin, were also long-term supporters of the college and COA’s writing and literature program. They taught writing and literature courses and have helped to fund that program.COA Lisa Stewart Chair in Literature and Women's Studies Karen Waldron and I—as well as many students—benefited enormously from their generosity and support. Over the years, Louisa and Bill worked with countless students, particularly some of the Davis scholars who graduated in 2005.
At his January 6 memorial service at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Washington, his family remembered Bill as someone who throughout his life recognized the goodness in others and the need to serve God, country, family, and friends. I was privileged to view that tribute where his three children, three granddaughters, a daughter-in-law, and sister Lucy Bell Sellers [a former theater professor at COA] all shared memories, sang, or read from Scripture.
In 1955, Bill graduated from Harvard and subsequently served as an officer in the US Army. After receiving graduate degrees from Harvard Business School and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Bill joined the Foreign Service. Over his 25-year career, Bill worked in Paris and Guatemala, and in Germany during negotiations over the Berlin Wall. He was later a senior watch officer in the State Department’s Operations Center—an office that makes sensitive decisions involving classified information. In Brussels he served on the United States Mission to the European Community; subsequently he worked on the Law of the Sea and finished his tour of duty with the State Department as consul general in Nice.
Bill’s zest for life and service was also exemplified on Mount Desert Island and at College of the Atlantic. Here, he and his extended family—the Newlins, Foulkes, and Sellers—in 1991 gave the college the Newlin Gardens in memory of Bill’s father, E. Mortimer Newlin, and in 1998 they endowed Elizabeth Battles Newlin Chair in Botany honoring his mother. As children, Bill and Louisa summered in Northeast Harbor, and in 1976, they purchased Four Winds—a Northeast Harbor home that once belonged to Louisa’s grandmother, and it was that home where they welcomed many of us from COA.
In 1987, Bill joined the Board of Trustees, where he served for 20 years and was named a life trustee in 2008. Bill served at a critical juncture in COA’s history: The college was recovering from the 1983 fire—rebuilding Kaelber Hall and the Thorndike Library, both severely damaged in the fire, and developing programs that expanded the concept of human ecology. The college had growing pains and needed a steady hand. “Bill and his family as well as other summer residents had the resources, ideas, and commitment to help us move forward,” said Shawn Keeley ’00, dean of institutional advancement. “We owe them a debt of gratitude.”
In reflecting on Bill’s life through memories and photographs, former president Steve Katona said, “…two essential features are indelible. First is Bill’s huge, beautiful, ever-present smile which, like the Cheshire cat’s, will always be there to remind us of his spirit. Second, is the love he expressed so easily and generously. We treasure the last words we shared with Bill in July at the COA Summer Institute, when Susie said, ‘I love you, Bill,’ and he replied, ‘I love you, Susie.’ It was Bill’s nature to greet the world kindly, with such a cheerful smile and so much love, and we are all much the better for it.”
Karen [Waldron], who worked extensively with Bill when she was academic dean, recalled Bill’s ability to deal with sensitive issues and to forge consensus. “As a board member, he was profoundly experienced and understanding of the issues and concerns of people often with divergent points of view. The combination of this understanding and experience is, perhaps, his greatest gift to the college.”
Current board chair Beth Gardiner noted it was hard to understate the massive impact that Bill had on the college. “Nothing would stop Bill from being involved. Just last summer, despite failing health, Bill and his wonderful wife, Louisa, were fixtures at our Summer Institute.”
Bill and Louisa played major roles in my life as friends and faculty members. They gave unstintingly of their love and time. Often they extended their summer well into the fall, sometimes even to Thanksgiving, and extending their summer benefitted the college. On several occasions, Louisa, a Shakespeare scholar at the Folger Library, taught Shakespeare, and Bill taught writing. In 2001, I was teaching a class for the incoming Davis scholars and soon realized that I needed to break the class into two sections. I asked Bill for help, and he said he’d be delighted to teach. And everything went quite well—that is until about two weeks after the end of the term when I called him to ask about his narrative evaluation, a COA requirement. In very strong tones, Bill told me I had never mentioned his having to write narrative evaluations. While literally that was probably true, I had assumed that as a long-time trustee of the college Bill knew that in part what makes COA unique is narrative evaluations.
Recently I found some of those evaluations, along with a self-evaluation, from one of Bill’s students, Santiago Salinas ’05, now a tenured associate professor in biology at Kalamazoo College in Michigan and the author of a number of papers in leading scientific journals. In his self-evaluation, Santiago wrote: “Undoubtedly this was a helpful experience… and my writing skills improved dramatically, thanks to Bill.” More recently in talking with Santiago, he told me, “I have great memories of his class—Bill’s frank, direct feedback was so weirdly refreshing to me when I was 18.”
In 2012, Bill collaborated with another COA faculty member, David Rockefeller Family Chair in Ecosystem Management and Protection Ken Cline, and three of his students to update and expand Bill’s Guide to the Lakes and Ponds of Mt. Desert, published in 1989 by Downeast Books and by the college in 2013 as The College of the Atlantic Guide to the Lakes and Ponds of Mt. Desert. In the preface to the second edition, Bill, who was in his 80s, questioned whether he had the stamina to update the book. “As I pondered my options, and as time passed, fate in the person of Ken Cline, a professor at College of the Atlantic, gave me a nudge. He asked if I would be willing to work with a small group of students for a trimester and update the book for reissue. It was a toss-up at best if I would be able to update Lakes and Ponds by myself. But working with another professor and a handful of students was another matter. I jumped at the prospect.”
Bill and Louisa made another gift to the college. At my retirement in 2022, former COA president Darron Collins ’92 asked them to contribute to the Writing for the Future Fund in honor of my 45 years teaching writing at COA—a fund that supports writing faculty, expands the peer tutoring program, and draws on new methods of communication to prepare students for communicating in today’s world.
In early September 2024, just before they left for Washington, I spent a lovely few hours with Bill and Louisa in their Northeast Harbor home overlooking Somes Sound. Even though he had what appeared to have been a mild setback earlier in the week, he seemed well, and Bill and Louisa welcomed me for tea. We sat in the living room with a fire in the fireplace, talked about the upcoming election, campus issues, books we had been reading, and our commitment to celebrate Bill’s 92nd birthday next summer.
While that celebration will not occur, Louisa, Lucy Bell, and I will sit by the fire, drink tea, and spend time reflecting on his contributions to the college and reminiscing about his accomplishments, his love for the island, and his many gifts to each of us.
Bill’s gifts as well as those of Lousia and the Foulke, Newlin, and Sellers families have helped to shape the COA ethos. We owe them so much and, like others, I will miss him.
The family has requested that gifts in Bill’s memory be made to the college. They may be sent to Advancement Office, College of the Atlantic, 105 Eden St, Bar Harbor, ME 04609 or electronically at coa.edu/giving.
