Editor’s note — John Newton, a well-known Tallahassee lawyer and retired administrative law judge, died recently after a long illness. Mary Ann Lindley, a retired county commissioner and former editorial page editor and columnist for this newspaper, wrote the following appreciation of John and the effect he had on all who knew him.
Fifteen days before he died, John Newton wrote on Facebook that he’d sold his sailboat and would be without a boat for the first time since 1991.
“My body tells me it’s time to move on,” he wrote, sad to part with his Hobie Cat but glad it went to a fellow sailor. Soon after, he went fishing off a dock and tried his hand at target shooting.
John, my wise and funny friend of many years, still hoped for a lung transplant at Shands Hospital to slow the assault of Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis. He’d endured IPF for several years, was in a pharmaceutical trial, and remained reasonably optimistic.
But one night he and his 28-year-old daughter Colleen had to call for emergency help when even his oxygen gear failed. He couldn’t walk or breathe. Within hours, he was on life support at Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare. With his Colleen and dear friends at his side, he died the afternoon of Sept. 8.
That phrase – “dear friends” – could apply to a large crowd. A retired administrative law judge, runner, sailor, hiker, lawyer, and compassionate soul, John had friends far and wide. Attorney Bob Weiss counted more than 50 responses to the Facebook post announcing his death, nearly all calling him their best friend.
“Wait a minute! I thought I was his best friend,” Weiss said, chuckling at his own claim. The two met in law school at Florida State University and remained constant companions.
Competition for the title of best friend is a sweet legacy. “The way he lived his life, the way he cared about so many people, John did leave a mark,” Weiss said. “He had friendships across ages and professions and made a point of bringing people together. Yet he never felt like he was enough.”
‘I hope people will say … I was a generous man’
Cari Roth, another friend and longtime running partner, recalled their last conversation. “He looked at me and said, ‘I hope people will say of me that I was a generous man.’ And he was. More than money, he gave his personal interest and caring in an outsized way to so many people.”
Many careers and friendships began with a “Newton connection.” He offered spectacular professional advice. When he sought a county judgeship in 2006, it was because, Roth said, “that’s where the law met real life for everyday citizens.” He lost the race but built a successful law practice, always mindful of the underdog.
Representing Florida shrimpers in 1994 against a constitutional amendment banning large fishing nets, John went shrimping himself to understand their work and their fear of losing their livelihoods. “He poured so much passion into their cause,” Roth said.
His first brush with fame carried a side of chagrin. He once shared a yellowed newspaper clipping, telling the story of a young public defender arguing his first case before the Florida Supreme Court who fainted at the podium but recovered to finish his argument. That lawyer was John.
“All the justices were kind and called to check on my well-being,” he said years later. “Now it’s a good story to share with new lawyers, just like Justice Adkins said it would be.”
Though born in Nashville on Aug. 19, 1952, to Kathryn Dorothy Dusenberry and Robert Quarterman Newton, John was a Tallahasseean through and through. After his father’s early death, his mother married John Welch Fisher, who became a beloved stepfather to John and his sister, Bobbi Newton Wigand. The family moved to Avon Park, Florida, where John grew up.
John knew early that he wanted to be a lawyer. He attended South Florida Junior College in Avon Park, completed his undergraduate degree at Florida State, and earned his law degree at FSU’s College of Law.
Admitted to The Florida Bar in 1977, he practiced in public service and private firms, including being one of many attorneys working for Al Gore during the 2000 presidential recount, before retiring in 2024 as a judge with the Division of Administrative Hearings (DOAH).
Newton lived a life devoted to public service
Former chief administrative law judge Bob Cohen called him “a mensch for the way he dedicated a large part of his life to the service of others, most often those less fortunate than he was.” Quoting John Lennon’s Imagine, Cohen said his friend envisioned “a world in which we all worked to ensure that people of every race, creed, or national origin lived hand in hand.”
Weiss added that John was “so proud of his daughter Colleen, of her principled life, protesting in L.A., being very committed and active,” especially in work with people battling addiction.
Though he spent part of his career in private practice, John devoted even more to public service: law clerk for a federal judge, assistant Florida attorney general, general counsel for the Agency for Persons with Disabilities, and finally DOAH judge.
He was active in The Florida Bar, Legal Aid Foundation, Tallahassee Women Lawyers, Legal Services of North Florida, and served as president of the Tallahassee Bar Association. “John was single-minded in finding justice for all, from the little person to the grand corporation,” Cohen said.
Life tested him early. At 16, a diving accident in Florida’s Lake Lotela severed his spinal cord. Doctors predicted paralysis and possible brain damage – if he survived at all. His sister Bobbi credited their mother’s fierce determination for his recovery. “He wasn’t mentally impaired,” she said. “John was brilliant. But that accident created his limp.”
That lifelong limp and chronic back pain became minor problems compared with his ambitions. He became a dedicated runner who gamely competed in marathons, backpacked with friends, and sailed skillfully even on rough waters.
“My dad was the best dad anyone could want,” Colleen said. “He taught me about justice and right and wrong and inspired me so much. He made a beautiful life for himself and for me, and from nothing.”
Last spring, when hope still burned, John reread Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” and posted it on Facebook: “Now in the last quarter of the game of life, it offers so much more relevancy, poignancy, wisdom and reflection. And it is an antidote for regret.”
I hope he left the game with none.
Mary Ann Lindley is a former Tallahassee Democrat columnist, editorial page editor, and later was a Leon County commissioner. She is writing a cultural memoir called “Fragments: Then & Now,” which is set for publication this fall.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: ‘I hope people will say I was generous’: Tallahassee’s John Newton remembered
Reporting by Mary Ann Lindley / Tallahassee Democrat
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