Bruce Marvin Newlan

Bruce Marvin Newlan died at home under hospice care on July 7, 2023 . He was 92 years old. He was born on November 24, 1930 in Long Beach, California, the only child of Marvin and Blanche, a couple of farmers’ kids who moved to the big city. Young Bruce enjoyed sunny Southern California but also the time he spent on Blanche’s relatives’ San Joaquin farms and Marvin’s childhood home in the Eastern Sierra town of Bishop. When it came time to go to college Bruce attended Fresno State and majored in physics. It was at a Valentines Day party that he met Jonette Lindsay, his future bride. Upon graduation Bruce did two things: he enlisted in the Navy and married Jonette on June 12, 1954. Bruce had hoped to be a Navy pilot but his eyesight was not 20/20 so he opted instead for Officer School in Anapolis, Maryland and emerged a short time later as a 90 Day Wonder Ensign. He and Jonette moved to Coronado Island, near San Diego’s Navy base and he left on his first tour, to Southeast Asia, on the aircraft carrier Essex. His talents as a photographer grew and if he wasn’t able to fly the P-80 jets on the carrier he was certainly able to get amazing photos of them. The tour “yearbook” is filled with his color shots. He finished his Navy active duty enlistment as a Lieutenant JG and joined the Naval Reserve, eventually reaching the rank of Captain in the reserve before retirement. With his wife and young son he left Southern California for the Bay Area. He worked for Lockheed Sunnyvale Missile and Aerospace as an engineer. The family settled in Santa Clara, in the nascent Silicon Valley. Bruce finally learned to fly at San Jose airport, using the GI Bill to pay for the lessons. In Cupertino he was involved as a lay person in founding a church, Bethel Lutheran. Bruce was a lifelong Christian and his faith was a guide to his life. He had a church family at every new place he lived and built up many friendships in the congregations. In the early 1960’s Bruce made wine as a hobby. He bought local grapes from vineyards, had his sons (now numbering 4 of them, Bob, Glen, Dan, Jim) crush the grapes with rain boots, and aged the resulting wine under the house in a crawlspace. In 1967 he bought 10 acres of walnut orchard a few miles south of Yountville. He tore out the walnut trees and planted Cabernet Sauvignon grapes as his first vineyard. In 1969, at his first harvest, Cabernet grapes commanded a premium price and a good chunk of his investment money was returned. Bruce practiced “weekend farming” for seven years and in 1974 he retired from Lockheed, moved to Napa and became a grape grower full time. He bought more acres of established vineyards in Napa Valley—15 acres of Pinot Noir and 20 acres of Chardonnay grapes. Various wineries in the valley purchased his grapes—Domaine Chandon, Mondavi, Trefefen—but he wanted to establish his own wine making skills he honed in his mancave lab in Santa Clara. In 1978 he started Alatera Winery in the barn on the first property he purchased. Cabernet Sauvignon was his initial vintage. In 1980, he changed the business name to Newlan Vineyards and Winery. The wine sold well and earned international awards. (In 1989 he accepted an award in London’s House of Commons for a Late Harvest Johannesburg Riesling, the “noble rot” variety. Bruce traveled all over the country doing tastings and with the charm of meeting the owner/winemaker as a selling point these trips were profitable yet not enough to provide money for expansion. The real estate market in Napa Valley was no longer in the undiscovered gem stage it was in the 1960’s. Bruce sold off the Chardonnay vineyard and took on investment partners but by 2002 he decided to exit the wine business. Bruce had been building a kit airplane since the mid nineties in a garage at the winery and that project led to his next move—to an “airpark” in Tucson, Arizona. The La Cholla Airpark was a subdivision where each lot was 7 acres and one could drive one’s airplane from one’s house to the landing strip. Bruce, retiree from Lockheed, the Naval Reserve, and the winery business, now had the time and money for his own projects. The kit plane didn’t work out so well because flying and landing it would be aeronautically dicey and since those are some of the most important aspects of a plane he decided to buy a used Luscombe to actually fly. He also wanted to transform the modest house in the airpark to a unique showcase and so he had an architect design a hangar/house combo that incorporated Spanish elements with a small airport control tower. The storybook retirement took a bad turn in 2002 when Jonette had a mild stroke and it was discovered that she also had an aortic embolism that was waiting to pop. She had aortic replacement surgery and the recovery slowed her down considerably. The house was finished and she was able to enjoy the spectacular desert views from the “control tower” but only at great effort to ascend the spiral staircase. She died on March 18, 2004, less than three months before her and Bruce’s 50th Wedding Anniversary. E-harmony was the way out of the 73 year old man’s grief. He met Myrna Jackson online and then courted her in person and then married her in person on August 31, 2004. Their second acts in Tucson were good and they had many friends there and many family visits but after Bruce’s 80th birthday his pilot’s wings were clipped by time and neuropathy. He sold the Luscombe. Soon he and Myrna were looking to Texas to live to be nearer to her daughter Karen’s family. They bought a house in Sun City, in Georgetown, Texas in 2013. Bruce took up photography again and was soon entering his work in competition. His shots in digital were as beautiful as the slides he had made as a young man. Back then he knew how to jazz up a slide show with topless hula girl slides. The slide shows in Santa Clara were far from boring and actually looked forward to, which is high praise for a slide show. Bruce’s 90th birthday occurred during the pandemic and he had a brush with his own heart issues, with sepsis and “vegetation” growing on a valve. He was able to stay in touch with far flung family on his iphone and Mac computer. Which is good for an old timer, although he never really came off as one. Myrna died in 2021 of cancer, and Bruce went west to Santa Monica and Los Angeles to live his remaining years. He and son Bob packed up his worldly goods into a box truck in a Southwest Road trip. Later he did a farewell tour to his Jackson Hole timeshare and finally to his old vineyards, now part of Silenus Winery. In May 2023 he fell and seriously injured his back. While in bed recuperating the years caught up to him and he checked out permanently on July 7, 2023. Bruce leaves was predeceased by wives Jonette and Myrna and sons Glen (Jerri- Lynn) and Jim (Rhonda). Bruce leaves two sons Bob (Corby) and Dan (Lilia), stepdaughter Karen (David), seven grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren.

Bruce Marvin Newlan

November 24, 1930 - July 7, 2023

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Bruce Marvin Newlan

November 24, 1930 - July 7, 2023

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