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In Memoriam: Wanda Newman

Posted on Friday, February 4, 2022

Wanda Newman
June 25, 1942 - December 6, 2021

In December 2020 the ARCS Colorado Chapter lost a devoted friend and dedicated 23 year member, Wanda Newman. Wanda joined ARCS in 1998 and served in many roles including VP of Finance and Bylaws Chairman. She was devoted to UCD and served as ARCS Campus Liaison for 14 years.  
 

Wanda Wallace Newman was born in El Campo, Texas, the fifth daughter of Gertrude Boon Schubeck Wallace and Samuel William Wallace, Jr. of Greenville, Illinois. It was during WWII, during which Sam Wallace worked on the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
 

The family moved to Virginia when Wanda was three. A gifted child, she was reading and had mastered basic math by that time.  After graduating from Virginia Beach High School in 1960, she entered college at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She left school in 1962 to marry Gerald Robbins (Jerry) Newman of Cleveland, Oklahoma. They had three children and settled in southeast Denver. After twenty years her marriage dissolved. She had recently begun working full time, and she returned to college and earned a degree from the University of Colorado, Denver.
 

In the early 1980s Wanda met Roy Pritts, Professor and Dean of the College of Music at CU-Denver, who guided her towards music technology, a field in which she excelled. They embarked on twenty-three-year loving relationship.  They were both members of the global Audio Engineering Society and traveled extensively. Wanda lost Roy to a heart attack in 2007.
 

A lifelong Republican, Wanda served the Party for more than four decades in various capacities.  She was also active with the ABWA (American Business Women's Association) for many years and served in various leadership capacities there. She sang in the CU Alumni and other choirs.  Active to the end, she succumbed to cancer on December 6, 2021.

She is survived by her sons, Gerald Robbins Newman, Jr. (Carol Kornelsen Newman) and Samuel Wallace Newman (Yvette Sharp Newman) and her daughter, Christine Newman Jones (Lt Col Gary Dean Jones); grandchildren, Jacob Samuel Newman and Rachael Angele Newman; sisters Cynthia Wallace Corboy, Rowena Wallace Gray and Adriane Ann Wallace. Her sister, Josephine Christine Vaughan pre-deceased her in 1998. 

Wanda Newman