Joan Perren Sautner Newton

Joan Perren Sautner Newton was born February 25, 1935 during a severe winter storm to Helen Elizabeth Failes Sautner and George Henri Sautner in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin during the Great Depression.  Her father, George, was a landscaper and roofer and her mother, Helen, an excellent seamstress and gardener.  The family moved first to Green Bay for work, and then, along with the extended family, to Los Angeles in 1943 for wartime jobs in the factories there.  When Joan was in the eighth grade, the nuclear family moved to Project City near Shasta Dam where her father took a construction job.  There she lived in a split-log home next to the Hat Creek Tribe (the indigenous Atsugewi people) with her parents and five younger siblings: Catherine, George (Chip), Randolph, Susan, and Jane.  Joan attended Shasta Union High School and then married Donald Robert Howell, which union produced three children: Daniel, Laura, and David.  Following a divorce, Joan married Gary Keith Newton on October 21, 1961 and added his three children by a previous marriage (to Mary Fern Rose), Jacquie, Gary Keith Jr., and Gail, to the newly-formed family of eight.  Joan helped support her large family working as an office nurse to Dr. Crashi Mitoma in Sacramento, California, while Gary worked two jobs as a Sacramento City firefighter (engineer) and Calvada truck driver.  In the 1960s, the entire family joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and attended the Second Ward of the Sacramento Stake.  In the 1970s, Joan and Gary helped care for over 200 foster children at their home in Placerville, California, and then literally built (over many years) their three-story dream home on ten acres of land at 5020 Hackomiller Road in Garden Valley, California.  There, Joan was very active with Church weddings and activities in the  Georgetown Ward, administrative (president) and volunteer activities with the Georgetown Divide Health Care Auxiliary, a personal business (The Can Do Girls), and continual work as an expert seamstress, including wedding dresses and prom gowns.  In 2019, health challenges for both Joan and Gary prompted the sale of the Hackomiller property and a move to Covington Senior Living in Lehi, Utah, where they were very happy and active in Church until the COVID-19 pandemic struck in March, 2020.  Gary passed October 31, 2020 and Joan died during a severe winter storm in Lehi, Utah, on December 23, 2021 due to complications of aortic stenosis during the Great Pandemic. A memorial service for Joan and Gary will be held on Friday, January 14, 2022, at the Georgetown Ward meetinghouse at 11:00 am.  Price Funeral Chapel (916-725-2109), directors.

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