From Georgia to Merced, a Military Family Blossomed

By Luciana Chavez

Nicky Newsom never intended to play football after high school.

But his Merced High football coach Max Newberry, a former Marine, and his future coach, Merced College legend Don Odishoo, had other ideas.

So when Nicky, born Claude B. Newsom Jr., eventually arrived at Merced College for a football preseason event, and saw a beautiful cheerleader there, his attitude about having his mind changed quickly improved.

We will let his bride tell the tale.

“I’d graduated from Livingston High in 1975 and took a year off,” said Janie Newsom (née Rodriguez). “Then my friend said, ‘Hey, let’s be cheerleaders at Merced College.’ I figured, ‘Why not?’

“That was 1976. To start, they brought all of the cheerleaders in to meet the football team, and I remember seeing Nicky across the room.”

They later made formal introductions near the water fountain that used to sit in front of the Lesher Building.

“Then I would catch Nicky wandering the halls of the art department,” said Janie, who studied art. “We kept running into each other, but he wasn’t wandering. He was looking for me!”

Merced College was their beginning. The couple celebrated their 48th wedding anniversary in September.

A Surprising Arrival

Nicky Newsom would never have been in California to make his love connection with Janie unless he, his sister Cindy and his brother Tommy hadn’t been sent west four years earlier.

They were living in Georgia when their mother Mary L. Newsom Sanders put them on a plane to San Francisco. Mom had decided they needed to live with their father, Claude B. Newsom Sr., who was then stationed at Castle Air Force Base in Atwater.

“I was supposed to go to the USO office when we landed and hand my mother’s note to the clerk and ask that they call my dad,” Nicky said. “Imagine his surprise. He said, ‘What?! Where are you?!’ My mom never told him we were coming.”

Claude Sr. regrouped. By then he had built up a large circle of friends in Merced who could act as a surrogate family to his children.

“Let’s just say it was a fast growing-up after that,” Nicky Newsom said. “But out of all the places I’ve traveled to in my life, Merced was probably the best time I ever had.”

Nicky’s younger brother Michael “Bear” Newsom moved out a couple years later. Oldest sister Patricia stayed in Georgia.

“It was a true community,” Michael said. “I loved it there. The diversity was also a big thing for us, because we grew up in Georgia. And I also felt like our teachers invested so much time in us.”

Military Family Grows

As it turned out, Claude Sr. became the patriarch of a big military family, with support from the extended “family” in Merced and at the college.

The elder Newsom, who passed away in 2001, served for 30 years in the U.S. Air Force and was a veteran of both the Korean and Vietnam wars. He attended Merced College after retiring in 1974 and graduated with an AA in what would later become Early Childhood Education. He went on to serve as a site supervisor and teacher at the Head Start Program in Merced for 26 years.

“I never thought I’d go from an E7 (master sergeant) to an O6 (colonel) in the military,” Michael said. “So much of that has to do with the care and attention we all received in Merced.”

Nicky played football at Merced College the year Stadium ’76 opened, before joining the Marine Corps in 1977. He spent several years stationed in Hawaii and 21 years at Camp Pendleton, retiring as a gunnery sergeant, before working another 21 years as a San Diego County Sheriff.

Even Janie ended up with a career that was military adjacent. Janie is still working on Marine Corps exchanges as a merchandiser, working with companies that exclusively provide goods to the military.

Tommy served 31 years in the Air Force. Cindy started Merced College in 1976 to train as a nurse and traveled throughout the country taking care of people as a registered nurse.

Patricia never lived in California, but she met a good man from the Air Force in Georgia. After raising three children, she enlisted and had a wonderful 20-year career in the Air Force herself.

Michael enlisted in the Air Force in 1982 with the military police and earned an officer’s commission in 1996. Over a 39-year career, he earned multiple degrees, including two master’s degrees, and retired in 2021 the Commander of the 737th Training Group at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland.

“The military gave me a lot of opportunities,” Michael said from his home in Virginia. “I started in the Air Force picking up grass and ended as commander of a campus of 7,000 airmen. It’s very humbling.”

Old Stomping Grounds

Last November, Nicky, Janie and Michael traveled to Merced to see family, run around their old stomping grounds at Merced College, and pay their respects at the gravesites for Claude Sr. and Cindy, who are both buried at Evergreen Cemetery.

They also came to see the Field of Honor, an annual display honoring veterans on the Merced College front lawn. Claude Sr. and Janie’s father Sabas, a World War II veteran in the U.S. Navy, have long had flags placed there each year.

The Newsom family has other ties to the college that remain important, like a friendship with longtime Blue Devil women’s basketball coach Allen Huddleston Sr.

“We really grew up there,” Nicky said of Merced. “We had mentors in the police department who knew my dad. It was good for us. They kept me out of trouble.”