Newton was a man who lived by his ideals, even when they were inconvenient and at times dangerous. He attended Deeps Springs College, during his high school years. Deep Springs was an unusual school built on academics, student self- government and manual labor. The entire program was free, but each student was expected to respond to the gift of an education with a life of “service to humanity.” Newton met this expectation for the rest of his 85 years.
At the age of 18 he publicly burned his draft card in San Francisco as part of his early testimony against war. At age 20 (1948), as a student at Swarthmore College, he was sentenced to a federal penitentiary for a year and a day for refusing not only to register for the draft, but also refusing to do alternative service. The headline of the newspaper article in the NYT was “Spurns Draft, Gets Year.” He later attended Oxford and Cornell obtaining advanced degrees in philosophy.
He arrived at UB as a philosophy professor in 1964 with four young children. He refused to sign the loyalty oath required at that time. Among other things, it required promising not to teach about overthrowing governments. Along with five other colleagues, Newton fought the oath, taking it all the way to the US Supreme Court where they won in a 5-4 vote.
During the 1960s he co-founded the Citizens Council on Human Relations, advocating racial integration and equality. This led to both him and his family receiving numerous death threats, late night phone calls, and in one case, a delivery to their home of funeral flowers. His wife, Anneliese, equally fearless, responded to one of these late-night death threats with “I am waiting for you. Why don’t you come over?” As a refugee who fled East Germany (a harrowing tale in its own right), she supported Newton’s stands against racism and war.
His main professional focus was the philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein. He often shared the ways in which he thought George Fox (founder of Quakerism) and Wittgenstein might be intellectual companions. Newton wrote six books and over 100 articles, including a Pendle Hill Pamphlet (#322) Nonviolence and Community: Reflections on the Alternatives to Violence Project.
All of this might make Newton seem inapproachable, but to me he became a dear friend. Towards the end of his life, Fenna and I made several trips to see him in his home. He went into prisons teaching AVP and his AVP name was “Rootin,Tootin Newton.”
I remember being impressed that this intellectual and ethical powerhouse asked for a clearness committee when he felt called to work with Bolivian Quakers. He wanted to be clear about this leading with his spiritual community especially as it related to asking to be released from the multiple roles that he played in the NYYM.
Either soon before or shortly after retiring, he went on a study tour to visit Bolivian Quakers. There he learned that most Quakers were indigenous people without access to education. Returning from this visit, he threw himself into work with Bolivian Quakers. He started the Bolivian Quaker Education Fund, an organization that still exists and that our meeting supports. Recently, some Buffalo Friends got to meet one of the recipients of BQEF scholarships.
Newton was well known among friends. When my husband and I spent our honeymoon in Monte Verde, Costa Rica (1994), we attended their bi-lingual meeting for worship. Afterword we introduced ourselves as being from Buffalo Meeting. During fellowship, a man came up to us and asked if we knew Newton Garver. Yes, we said we did. The man smiled and asked, “Does he still have red hair?” I had only known Newton as a white-haired man. The question showed me how long Newton had been showing up among Friends and working in the world.
I will end with one of my favorite stories about Newton. A man who sometimes visited our meeting and spent most of his time on the streets, came to meeting and offered ministry. His words became increasingly confusing and off topic and Friends became more and more uncomfortable. Eventually, Newton called on him by name and said, “You need to stop talking now so that we can think about what you said.” I found this an effective and kind way to “thread the needle” between treating both those in worship and our visitor with respect.
In the challenging times ahead of us, it’s important to lift up people like Newton, who went to jail for his beliefs, fought a lawsuit against an unjust law that affected teachers all over the country, and worked tirelessly for intellectual truth, prisoners and Bolivian Quakers.