Jan Newcomer of Greenbrier wasn’t wearing her usual purple last week when she visited Buffalo Alumni Hall at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway.
“I wore purple for almost 14 years,” she said. “It was time for a little color change.”
Louisiana native Newcomer had a lot of Louisiana State University purple and gold in her wardrobe when she changed to UCA purple and gray as director of alumni services, a position she held for 13 years and 10 months. She retired in December.
It was just time, she said. Newcomer’s life has shown her that timing is everything, and she likes to call some things fate.
Her mother, Erma Creel, didn’t go to college to become a teacher until she was 40 years old, and she and Newcomer overlapped one semester at Northeast Louisiana University.
“She drilled that in us — education, education,” Newcomer said.
Newcomer, 59, also delayed her degree, but not as long. She went to college right out of high school and stayed a year. She had to declare a major, but she didn’t have a clue what she wanted to do, she said. Newcomer said she thought she wanted to be an architect until she realized all the math and science that went along with it.
She had several jobs, but the “most defining,” she said, was at American Bank and Trust in Shreveport, Louisiana.
“I had my introduction to the profession of personnel management.” That was a field that was just starting, she said.
Newcomer, who was about 21, was a new-accounts secretary. She and another woman, slightly older, set up the first personnel department for the bank.
“Loved it — it was just the two of us,” Newcomer said. “We did it 24-7.”
Newcomer came up with job descriptions, salary ranges for job levels, policy, and procedure manuals based on state and federal regulations.
“We were basically self-taught,” she said. “We worked hard, but you know, we really, really had fun.”
On the weekends, Newcomer did administrative work for the co-worker’s husband, a consultant in the banking industry. He looked at Newcomer one day and told her, “You’re good at this; however, you’re never going to be able to go further without a degree.”
At 25, she enrolled at Northeast Louisiana University (now the University of Louisiana at Monroe) and in 1984 was one of the first seven graduates in the personnel-management program.
“I packed up and moved to Dallas, Texas, to find my fame and fortune in personnel management,” she said, laughing. To be fair, she added, Dallas was the place to be at that time. Companies were just getting into personnel management.
After a couple of months of lying around the apartment pool, she got serious about finding a job and landed one almost immediately at MSL International, an executive-search company for recruiting and hiring executives for Fortune 500 companies.
After a year, she went to work for Freddie Mac in Dallas as coordinator of personnel.
“It was recruiting, staffing and hiring, a little bit of wage-and-salary administration — all those things I’d been exposed to at the bank before I had my degree,” she said.
She got a call one day from Chris Ruissi, executive president of what was then U.S. Life Corp., which was based in New York. Ruissi previously had interviewed her for a job. She jumped at the chance to work with him and the company. She recruited for the Dallas office and ended up being the assistant human-resources manager over six companies and four satellite companies. Newcomer, who was married at 21 and divorced at 23, said she and her co-workers “became friends and family.”
In the mid-’90s, human resources began to change, she said.
“It moved more into counseling, dealing with drug and alcohol abuse, domestic abuse, and AIDS was a major, major issue,” she said. Newcomer took on employee counseling, along with her other duties of benefits, wage and salary, recruiting and staffing. “That became very difficult for me. I took that home with me — especially with domestic abuse, ‘Are they going to make it through the night? Are they safe?’”
As she approached 40, Newcomer said she decided to make a career change.
She found out NLU was looking for an alumni director when a longtime director was retiring, and she was hired at her alma mater.
“I felt like it was my opportunity to do something and give something back. My education certainly made a difference in my life,” she said.
Her parents were thrilled that she was back in Louisiana, too.
Newcomer didn’t have to reinvent herself. “It was a very easy transition,” she said. When she was in Dallas, she’d volunteered with groups and helped plan lots of large events, a skill that was needed as alumni director.
She was already used to traveling through her job at U.S. Life Corp., and “we traveled extensively, extensively at NLU,” she said.
“I was single; I enjoyed it. Of course, we were driving a van and pulling a trailer with 500 pounds or more of crawfish. We had crawfish boils all over,” she said.
Newcomer had never, ever missed an alumni event, she said, but the one time she did, it changed her life.
An older friend in Louisiana, Glen Taylor, called her for advice about finding classmates for his 30-year high school reunion at the school she also attended. Glen invited her to the reunion, and after much deliberation, she decided to skip an alumni event in New Orleans, let her staff handle it and go to the reunion.
Her future husband, a friend of Glen’s, came up to her and said, “Hi, I’m Bruce Newcomer. Am I supposed to know you?”
They talked about Glen, and Bruce asked if she wanted to play a joke on Glen. She said sure, and she hid behind Bruce when he greeted Glen. “Bruce said, ‘I want you to meet my fiancee,’” and moved to reveal her.
They had a good laugh, but she went to the reunion dinner and dance with him the next day. Three weeks later, Jan and Bruce had their first real date. Two weeks later, he proposed.
They went to see her parents the next day. Her father was “absolutely shocked,” she said, but her mother was “absolutely thrilled.” Erma had worked part time during the Christmas season for years with Bruce’s father, a manager at Howard Griffin Land O’ Toys in Louisiana. Erma “had the most respect for him,” and she’d seen Bruce come in and out, Newcomer said.
Because Newcomer was busy with alumni events at NLU, planning a wedding was tricky.
“I said, ‘I’ve got to tell you, I need to get through football season,’” she said. The couple got married on Nov. 12, 2000, the day after NLU’s last home football game of the season.
Bruce was living in Greenbrier, so that’s where they went. He had moved to Greenbrier in the early ’80s to work at Union Pacific in North Little Rock, she said. Newcomer said she stayed home for about 4 1/2 months and “almost went crazy.”
She sent her resume to UCA, Hendrix College and Central Baptist College, seeking a position in alumni services.
It’s rare to find openings in alumni services, she said, and UCA and Hendrix each had a position available. “I consider it fate,” she said.
UCA hired her, and she started her new job on April 2, 2001, as UCA’s first director of alumni services who wasn’t a graduate of the university. Newcomer said she never considered not being a graduate a hindrance because of her skills and experience.
Myrtle Lee Selig, a UCA graduate, president of the alumni association at the time and a former Conway school teacher, was invaluable, Newcomer said. “She was absolutely my mentor,” she said.
“She taught me so much, not just about UCA,” Newcomer said. Sometimes Selig would pick up Newcomer, and they’d get lunch and eat in the car as Selig drove up and down streets in old Conway and gave her history lessons.
“She said, ‘Now, this is the Ward family who lived here’, … and she’d give me the entire history of that family. She was forever the teacher. She taught me so much. I don’t know how I could have made it without her,” Newcomer said.
Selig died in 2007 at age 89. “I still miss her tremendously,” Newcomer said.
Selig would talk about former students, Newcomer said, including “little Tommy Courtway,” now the president of UCA.
Newcomer said she worked under six presidents during her tenure. She was hired under Win Thompson and worked under him; John Smith, who was interim president; Lu Hardin; Courtway as interim; Allen Meadors; and Courtway again.
“UCA had some difficult times there for a while, very difficult,” she said. It made her job harder when UCA was in the news with some controversy about a president.
“When you’re working with alumni, you have to earn their trust and respect,” she said. “There were some alums that stuck with us, but we lost a few. We’ve worked for several years trying to gain them back.”
Newcomer reeled off a list of alumni who remained committed to UCA, and her.
“They never let their belief and loyalty to UCA waver — ever. They keep you going — absolutely keep you
going,” she said.
Newcomer was a one-woman show when she started, but staff was added. She praised Aaron Knight, assistant director for membership and marketing, and Heather Harper, assistant director for student and young alumni engagement. She also said she was “blessed to have” Haley Crafton Fowler, who was her assistant director of alumni services for seven years.
“She brought a whole new perspective and energy. She made a big difference,” Newcomer said. Fowler is now director of annual giving.
Newcomer said she thinks she left her mark, too.
“I truly believe the alumni association is stronger and better — there’s still a ways to go — but I do believe it’s stronger and better,” she said
“I feel like my greatest accomplishment was the introduction of the student alumni program, which is the Association of Future Alumni,” she said. “It was very successful. Students were able to serve as liaisons between the alumni association and the student body.”
Members, who have to apply and be interviewed to be accepted, educate students on what it means to be an alum, she said, and keep the alumni association informed of “critical issues of today’s students.” The program started in 2003 with 17 students and has 30-plus now, she said.
“They take ownership of the organization, and that’s something I’ve enjoyed watching. They learned to make it their own,” she said.
Newcomer said she left UCA with some unfinished business. One of the regrets she had was that the Association of Future Alumni endowment hadn’t built up enough to award any scholarships.
Newcomer said she was surprised during UCA homecoming with the announcement that the endowment was fulfilled. She said Shelley Mehl, vice president of advancement, and Fowler “conducted a little campaign behind my back” and raised enough funds to endow it. It was renamed the Jan A. Newcomer AFA Endowment Fund.
“I’m very, very proud of that. That’s something that is going to benefit AFA students forever,” Newcomer said. The first scholarship should be awarded in the fall, she said.
Mehl also said she is most proud of the endowment fund Newcomer started and for which the advancement office did secret fundraising.
“[The Association of Future Alumni is] a way to see what your life is going to be like after graduation and a way for our alums to give back and be reminded of their time at UCA. Alumni Services is all about keeping that connection. Jan saw that and knew it had to be nurtured before [students] leave,” Mehl said.
“When she came — she’s not an alum — she truly embraced UCA. She became a Bear,” Mehl said. “She added some structure to the office. She really organized things in a way that allows us to keep things moving forward and build on what she started.”
Now that she and her husband are retired, Newcomer said, they’ve talked about going back to Louisiana to live on Lake D’Arbonne, which is a special place for her and her husband. He learned to fish and ski there, and he proposed to her there at his aunt’s lake house. They were married in an open-air chapel on the banks of the lake.
They’re looking for property on the lake. Winter’s not the best time to find a place, she said, but when the time is right, it will happen.
That she knows.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.