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Julia Newman, 90, worked as a clerk for 35 years for the Southern Pacific Railroad. She started shortly after she came to Tucson by train from Chicago in December 1942. Newman will be honored March 20 during the anniversary celebration of the arrival of the first train to the Old Pueblo.
Mamta Popat / Arizona Daily Star
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"I looked at him in the eyes and told him, 'If you can learn (the railroad business), I'm sure I can, too, but I might take a little longer. Good day.' "
Julia Newman, remembering her last words in her first job interview at Southern Pacific
DID YOU KNOW . . .
The railroad finally made its way as far as Tucson in March 1880, creating a much faster link for goods and people from the outside world.
Until then, Arizona's "most ancient and honorable pueblo," (Tucson) boasted being the sole U.S. town to sell Mexico $5 million in goods, and the only one with a population of 8,000 people and 10,000 dogs. Not a single concert or theatrical performance graced the adobe settlement that year."
Rail workers made up the majority of the baseball teams that represented Tucson in games against teams from Nogales, Douglas, Clifton-Morenci and other Southern Arizona towns for decades. The Southern Pacific reduced fares to ball games, bull fights and rodeos, making rail excursions great fun in early Tucson.
— Information courtesy of William Kalt, author of "Tucson Was a Railroad Town."

Tucson Region

Neto's Tucson by Ernesto Portillo Jr. : Railroad clerk saw Tucson transform

Neto's Tucson by Ernesto Portillo Jr.
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 03.09.2008
America was a full year into its second world war when 25-year-old Julia Newman, just days after she arrived from Chicago, walked into the office of the Southern Pacific's assistant superintendent.
The former secretary to the vice president of a tool and die company back in Illinois asked the railroad boss for a job.
They had a nice visit, but he told her she didn't have railroad experience.
"I looked at him in the eyes and told him, 'If you can learn it, I'm sure I can, too, but I might take a little longer. Good day,' " Newman, 90, remembered saying.
She walked out of the office and, at the suggestion of a new admiring SP employee who marveled at her spunk, Newman walked to the SP freight house up Toole Avenue.
She asked for a job and, on Jan. 1, 1943, began her 35-year career with the Southern Pacific Railroad.
Since Tucson's wartime days, Newman has witnessed the great changes of her adopted town as a clerk for the old railroad company.
"We were one big family," said Newman, who retired in 1978. "Railroad people cared for one another."
On March 20, Newman will be honored at the 128th anniversary celebration of the first arrival of the iron horse.
The festivity will take place from 11 a.m to noon at the Southern Arizona Transportation Museum in the old depot, 414 N. Toole Ave.
She talked, and I listened Thursday, sitting in the living room of her Blenman-Elm neighborhood home near East Speedway and North Country Club Road.
When Newman began clerking at the freight office, the SP trains were bursting with troops and supplies headed west and east. After the war, as Tucson began to boom with growing families, the freight office and the passenger depot became the town's commercial and family gathering points.
Workers loaded and unloading boxcars around the clock. Freight trucks arrived empty or full to the loading docks. And for 18 years, Newman kept careful track of the shipments coming and going.
"Boy, I kept my records really well," said a spirited Newman.
At the depot, Tucsonans greeted passengers who arrived to visit or to stay, as Newman did.
Tucsonans also gathered at the depot to wave goodbye.
When Newman wasn't working, she was raising the three children born to her and William Peters Jr., a traveling pharmaceutical representative.
They first lived on North Seventh Avenue and later near SS. Peter and Paul Catholic Church, whose school Billy, Sheila and Julie attended.
Peters passed away in 1963, and in 1966 Newman married Don Newman, a Southern Pacific employee for 27 years and World War II vet. He died in 1997.
When the Toole Avenue freight office closed in the early 1960s, Newman moved to the East 22nd Street rail yard. She continued to clerk but worked midnight to 8 a.m. In 1968, she became the secretary to the assistant superintendent and retired 10 years later.
Newman hasn't stopped working, however. She volunteers: Monday she works in the Blenman Elementary School cafeteria; Tuesday she's a docent at the transportation museum; Wednesday she delivers hot meals to people; Thursday she cuddles critically ill infants at University Medical Center; Friday, if she has finished her errands, she volunteers at Lyons Elementary School on the far East Side.
"I love Tucson," Newman said.
Little did she know that day, a week before Christmas, when Newman boarded a train in Chicago and headed west to Tucson, that she would stay. She clearly remembered that dreary day.
"It was freezing and raining sleet," said Newman.
She had packed her bags, including a fur coat, and left her family in Aurora, Ill. Peters, then her boyfriend, was waiting for her in Tucson.
When the train finally coasted into the Toole Avenue depot — eight hours late — more than her boyfriend was waiting for her. "I fell in love with the mountains, the sunshine, and the roses were blooming," she said.
"I thought I was in paradise."
She had come to stay.
Newman had bought a one-way ticket.
Neto's Tucson
Ernesto
Portillo jr.
● Reporter Ernesto "Neto" Portillo Jr. has deep roots here. His maternal grandparents came to Tucson in 1931. His paternal great-great-grandfather, Argentine-born Onofre Navarro, had lived in Tucson in the early 1860s. ● Portillo can be contacted at 573-4242 or eportillo@azstarnet.com.
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