Charles Newberry has enjoyed a successful career as an attorney- at-law in Jones County, but, for the record, history is what has inspired him.
Known as ‘Charlie’ by his many friends, Newberry is a man with many talents, interests, and hobbies. He has been active in the community, the legal profession, and the sports arena, but his life has been driven as well by his passionate interest in history.
“What’s most important to me, besides family, is recording history, making a record for future generations, not just my family,” Newberry declared recently in an interview.
One important tool in that undertaking has been the use of a drone he purchased in 2016. Newberry has taken hundreds – if not thousands – of photos of not just Jones County and surrounding areas but across the state.
“The drone photography, taking pictures of things as they are now, so if they change there’s a record of the way it used to look” is how Newberry describes his work. “It is a way of preserving history and lets people who are out of town see what this area looks like.”
The Newberry family moved to the farm in Jones County, known as Park Haven, in 1954, when he was 5, and, as the youngster got older, he exhibited his interest in keeping records.
“While in junior high school, I cataloged every specie of tree on our 240-acre farm and learned to love trees,” he said.
The interest in photography really started about the time he entered college.
“I got my first camera, a Brownie Instamatic, right before starting to Mercer,” Newberry shared. “One of my first photos was driving by Mercer and taking a photo of a gas station that was selling gas for 10¢ a gallon.”
It was then that he also began recording history of the farm with his camera.
“I climbed the tallest sweetgum tree in my yard and took photos for 360° to record what everything looked like at that time. Actually,” he admitted, “I never climbed that tree again, but I also frequently climbed on the top of chicken houses and barns and my house and took photos in all directions to record what the farm looked like. I would do this every few years after that.”
Upon graduation from law school, Newberry and his wife, Terree, lived elsewhere in Jones County before moving back to Park Haven in 1983. Naturally, he wanted to make sure all details of the farm were preserved for possible future use.
“I kept detailed records of farming, repair, and horticulture activities from 1983 until the present,” Newberry said. “I have a record in this journal of every tree, shrub, and flower that I have planted on the farm and yard since 1983.”
Newberry, currently in his second stint as president of the Jones County Kiwanis Club, doesn’t limit his record-keeping to farm activities. In fact, he doesn’t do much of anything without charting it.
“I keep a separate journal I started in ’87,” he said. “Every vacation I’ve taken since 1987, I’ve done a complete write-up on it. That’s been the greatest thing in the world because you can’t remember anything. I go back and look at this thing constantly, answering questions people have, thinking about it; plus, I put comments to improve my next trip to that place.”
The history buff has gone even further in that venture.
“About three years ago, I set out to try to re-create every trip from ’87 back to when I was born. And,” he commented, “I’ve done a pretty good job of getting it. I’ve used old family photos to help reconstruct it.”
The attorney has actually kept journals of other activities even longer than 1987.
“I keep a journal of every outdoor thing I’ve ever done, every hunt, all canoeing, every scuba dive, every flight as a pilot, everything, from 1970 to the present,” he said.
Among the many activities and hobbies of Newberry is his love for traveling. He and Terree have done a lot over the years, and he prefers whenever possible to prepare for the trip in his own way.
“My favorite thing to do about traveling is to read about something, then go where it happened, in history, to find the place.”
Terree drove him one year to see most of the civil war battlefields in Virginia.
“That was fantastic, one of the best trips I ever took,” Newberry boasted.
“I love cooking cultural kinds of food, Mexican, Italian, and learning how they do it authentically.”
Newberry has enjoyed many outdoor and athletic activities: kayaking, canoeing, flying, snow skiing, scuba diving, hiking, basketball, softball, and tennis among them, all of which involve risk of injury to various degrees.
“My greatest passion ever would have to be kayaking and canoeing when I was younger,” he declared. “It started when I was in college. I bought my first canoe, entered a bunch of canoe races, entered kayak races.
“I canoed the Flint River near Thomaston, whitewater there, 22 times.”
Newberry was a licensed pilot and flew on numerous occasions until fate intervened.
The couple learned Terree was going to have another child, and he became concerned there would be a financial problem.
“I thought, ‘this is going to hit me financially hard. I don’t need to be spending money flying’, and so, I cut back, I quit flying cold turkey.”
Newberry doesn’t consider any of his activities overly risky.
“When I was younger, I certainly did not think about the risk involved in many things as I do now,” he acknowledged. “However, I have always studied all of the risk carefully to try to prepare properly to prevent any problem occurring. I have always loved the learning and preparation required for outdoor activities and have not only trained for all of these activities but read extensively about them.”
Newberry’s versatility extended beyond athletics. He taught himself to play the piano and trumpet and played a duet on the violin in front of a full audience at First Baptist Church of Gray, where he also sang in the choir a total of 24 years.
Not all was fun and games, however. Newberry began his legal career as an Assistant District Attorney in 1974, and four years later he was appointed Probate Judge. He was elected the next year, then again in 1980 before resigning in 1981 to pursue the practice of law full-time when office space became available.
Today’s operational resources did not exist when he opened that office.
“I typed deeds and wills the old-fashioned way, on a typewriter,” he recalled. “Looking back, it’s hard to believe what we had to do.”
As a litigator, Newbery was involved in many trials and hearings. He recalled an instance when he represented a young former Marine in a domestic relations case in which the ex-wife was suing for child support, among other claims. Superior Court Judge William Prior, a former Marine himself, was on the bench.
“I always trained my clients to be nice in court, like all lawyers do, say the right things, be friendly,” Newberry said with a smile. “The other lawyer did not train that woman. That was the most beautiful case, and we got everything we wanted.
Because he was nice, he was friendly, he said the right things. Everything she said, she made an editorial comment, threw in things bad about him. I learned a lot on that case.”
With his son, John, mostly in charge of the law firm now, the veteran lawyer has begun to curtail his work, and he enjoys the new pace.
“This is my 50th year of being an attorney,” he said with a hint of pride. “I would have retired earlier probably, but since John runs the office, I am able to come in less often, and he handles all of the administrative duties.
“I reduced my workload to two days a couple of years ago and just recently down to one day a week in which I take appointments, but I frequently come to the office for something to do and because I enjoy being there and especially enjoy meeting with clients.
“I stopped taking contested cases some time ago and leave all of that up to John,” Newberry confided. “My favorite type of law is preparing wills and other estate documents and advising people on how to prepare for the future and other end-of-life issues.”
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