(Editor’s Note — The following column was written by Edward DeCourcy and was published in the Argus-Champion in 1992. The subject of the column, Billy Newell, passed away on Jan. 29, 2018.)
Back in the days when Tony Kulesza and Pat Zullo were keeping Newporters well supplied with wholesome tasty victuals from their Shop-Rite Supermarket in the premises now occupied by Gauthier and Woodward and the Chamber of Commerce, they had a priceless asset.
They had Billy Newell, who was graduating at Towle High School in 1962. He has a brain that is superior to any of today’s highly touted computers. It was fun in those days to watch that brain function. A customer would push a basket full of groceries to the check-out counter, Bill would glance at it and say, “That will be $32.67.” Neither the customer nor any of the watchers would believe it.
Then Bill would punch in the price of every item in the basket, and without fail, the register would announce $32.67.
It was not only that Bill could add up all those numbers in his head; he knew the price of everything in the store.
In New Hampshire, where the state was encouraging its citizens to become addicted to gambling, talent like Billy Newell’s did not go unnoticed, and there came a day when he was invited to go to work at the race track.
That presented a problem for Bill. He was required to wear what is called a “business suit.” Newport boys did not usually have “business suits,” but Bill got one, and it must have served him well. Last I knew, he was still at the track, and my guess is that nobody has slipped a fast one over on him.
Billy Newell has more than a swift brain. He has a warm heart. Before he joined the state in whatever it does to separate citizens from their money in the hope that somehow that will leave them with more money, Bill delivered Meals on Wheels to lonely elderly people in Newport.
He gave them more than bread and butter and soup. He gave them some of his warm personality. It is no exaggeration to claim that Bill would have been warmly welcomed in every home he visited, even if he brought no food. His being there with them, for however few minutes he was, brightened their lives.
Billy Newell needs no calculator. He has a brain that does for him what calculators do for other people, and he is smart enough to know that in the grocery business prices change from day to day, so he kept track of those price changes each day.
Some of his Towle High School classmates are farmers, and they, too, understand agricultural economics. If you listen they will tell you that you have some control over the prices you pay for vegetables. When the price of a head of lettuce becomes higher than you can afford, they say, just stop buying lettuce for a few days, and if your friends do the same, the price will come down to what you think is reasonable.
Does that principle apply, also, to boots and shoes and boxing gloves? Or are commodity prices controlled by how much your neighbor is willing (or able) to pay?
Next year some of Billy Newell’s Towle High School classmates will be strolling around town while they are here to enjoy their 30threunion. It’s a safe bet that all of them will remember Bill, partly for that miracle mathematical brain, but mostly because he gave them the greater gift of friendship.
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