Miami Ohio University Athletics
Gale Newton Retires from RedHawk Athletics After 31 Years
6/30/2010 12:00:00 AM | General
June 30, 2010
Gale Newton RETIRES FROM REDHAWK ATHLETICS AFTER 31 YEARS
By Drew Davis
When most people retire, they do it to relax, to move somewhere warm and to stop working. Gale Newton is not most people.
As Newton moves into his next phase of life, Newton will not be buying a pair of white leather shoes and head to Florida to spend the days relaxing on the beach. Instead, after 31 years as Miami University's head athletic trainer, he will open Newton Contracting, a home remodeling and renovating company.
"I can't sit around," he said. "I'd go crazy."
"My step-daughter, Lisa, just graduated from law school. In the time between finishing classes and the actual graduation, she was talking with her mom and me," he explained. "I said I've always liked to do home repairs and remodeling. I take great pride in what I do and people I've done jobs for have always been very happy with them. Over the course of the conversation, she asked what I'd like to name the business. I said 'Newton Contracting' and by the next day she had the start of a website, a tax ID number and forms filled out for a license. By the middle of July, we will launch Newton Contracting."
Newton has always worked with his hands, building and fixing things. Whether it was growing up on his parents' farm and ranch in Montana where he was "always building something," in the training room setting a dislocated joint, repairing houses around Oxford as a summer job, making a rocking horse from scratch for his granddaughter or building a porch for a friend, Newton has always succeeded working with his hands.
"That feeling of 'I built it' is a great feeling," he said. "When I got divorced, I needed some extra money. One summer, I worked on a roofing job uptown and liked it. After that, I talked to the property manager from College Real Estate and asked about doing jobs for them. I cleaned up some apartments and repaired things. Once they saw what I was capable of, the work was basically endless. I really liked going in and making a transformation."
Recently, he helped out a friend by building a deck for him.
"When he saw it, he said 'you need to quit your day job because you have too much talent'", said Newton.
To say his retirement will not be typical is an understatement. Then again, Newton's path to Miami wasn't all that typical to begin with.
"My road to college was a bit different," he said.
In high school, the family of his best friend, Wade, hosted a foreign exchange student from Australia. When they finished their senior year, the exchange student invited Wade to spend a summer in Australia. Wade, in turn, asked Newton to travel with him.
"I said I'd really like to go, but my dad will never let me," Newton said. "Then, one night at dinner, dad said 'I hear Wade's going to Australia and I hear he's looking for someone to go with. Did he ask you?' I said 'yeah, but I have to go to school.' He said 'you can go to school any time, this is the chance of a lifetime ... take it.' And that settled it, I took it."
They didn't just spend the summer in Australia though. Instead they spent the entire year, traveling and working their way around the country.
"When I came back, I enrolled at the University of Montana, majoring in forestry," he said. "I found out quickly the forestry major was not preparing you to go into the woods, but preparing you to sit in an office and manage the woods. And that's not what I wanted to do."
Newton's first year of college left him questioning his future.
"When I came home for spring break, I told my dad I was going to quit school and become an apprentice carpenter," he said. "My dad had an eighth-grade education, but he was one of the smartest men I've ever met. He suggested I go back and finish the year and take some classes I might enjoy, just to see what happens."
So, Newton went back to school and enrolled in classes he thought might help him in the future or generally interested him.
"I signed up for First Aid and CPR because I thought working with my hands, I could need some first aid some day," he said. "I took a class in care and prevention of athletic injuries, because I thought that sounded fun, human anatomy because the human body has always fascinated me and a few other classes. I absolutely fell in love with athletic training."
From that point on, Newton knew he'd found his calling. When he finished his undergraduate work in athletic training in 1976, his advisor suggested he apply for an open job at Miami University.
"My advisor said `here's this very prestigious school with a position open,'" Newton said. "I had never really heard of Miami University. I thought I was going to Florida. I sent in my application and got a call from the director of recreational sports and he was very interested and wanted to know if I was still interested in coming to Miami, which I discovered was in Oxford, Ohio."
Newton accepted the offer, but then realized it was a graduate assistantship and not a full-time job. After a series of calls back and forth and a period of time thinking about the opportunity, he decided to take it.
"I packed up all my belongings in a 1970 Chevy Impala and a big U-Haul trailer and crossed the divide in a whiteout snow storm," he said. "When I left Montana, there was three feet of snow and it was 40 degrees below zero. I made it into Ohio and drove right through Oxford and was headed to Cincinnati before I realized I had just missed Miami."
As a graduate assistant, Newton took classes for a master's in education and worked with the football team. He graduated the following year and found himself again without a fulltime job. After working at the Oxford Ace Hardware store for six months, he decided to return home to Montana that summer.
"I lived above a funeral home and worked at a car dealership during the day as a partsman and answered calls at the funeral home at night," he said. "I did that for a year."
That year, in February of 1979, he got the letter that would bring him back to Oxford for the next three decades.
"I had just gotten home from a day on the slopes 20 minutes from where I lived and on the table was this letter from Miami's head athletic trainer, Ken Wolfert, asking if I would return to Oxford for a full-time job," Newton said. "It was a difficult decision. I was back home. I spent the summer river rafting, the fall hunting and the winter skiing. I sat and thought about it, then said to myself `what are you doing thinking about this? Of course you are going to go. It's the career you've always wanted and a great chance to get started.'"
On July 1, 1979, Newton returned to Oxford as a full-time assistant trainer, working with the football and basketball teams.
But what he thought was his start in the industry turned out to be his new home. In 1981, Wolfert left for Providence after 12 years as head trainer and Newton was promoted, becoming just the third head athletic trainer in Miami history, a position he held for the next 29 years, until his retirement, June 30, 2010.
Over the years, Newton has worked with numerous coaches and countless players. He's spent time providing support for the football, hockey, basketball, baseball, track and other teams. He recounts working with some of the legends in Miami athletic history.
"Ron Harper was great to work with," Newton said. "He was fun and an extremely good athlete. And he was great around the community. For the football team I worked with Jake Bell, Ben Roethlisberger, Travis Prentice, Ron Carpenter, and Deland McCullough. A lot of great athletes. With hockey, I worked with Kevin Adams and Danny Boyle. George Gwozdecky and Randy Walker were two of my favorite coaches to work with."
He credits working with athletes and students as a way to stay young and healthy.
"I enjoy working with athletes," he said. "It's fun. It's a challenge. And it keeps you young. You talk to these students and laugh and joke with them. It really does keep you young. I've loved my time here."
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