Matoaca High School guidance technician retires

For the past eight years, students and parents who called or visited Matoaca High School's guidance department have met the friendly and knowledgeable Anabel Newton.

But this summer, students looking for transcripts or parents registering their children for the fall won't find her anymore. The guidance technician retired last week after 31 years with the Chesterfield County school system.

She worked as a bookkeeper and office manager at Salem Church, Bailey Bridge and Matoaca middle schools before going to Matoaca High in 2000.

Newton's history with Matoaca High goes back to the school's first class in 1963, at the small building on 6001 Hickory Road. Matoaca High was one of the county's first integrated schools.

Newton was attending Petersburg High School because there was no secondary school in Matoaca and Thomas Dale High was too far away. The county paid tuition for those who attended Petersburg High, she said.

When Matoaca High opened, the district's seventhto 11th-graders attending Thomas Dale High were required to go to it. For 11th-graders attending Petersburg High, switching was optional. Newton decided to transfer.

Parents worried about the safety of their children, but for most students, it was just another school, she said.

"There was a lot of apprehension, on both sides, of what it was going to be like," she said. "But we did not have issues with getting along."

Newton was among the first graduating class - 44 students - in 1965. Her children also graduated from Matoaca High.

To be closer to home, Newton took a pay cut to go back to Matoaca High in 2000. Two years later, she moved into the new and bigger Matoaca High at 17700 Longhouse Lane. Last month, 362 students graduated.

In the fall, one of her three grandchildren will start attending the school.

Newton said she will miss feeling needed by the students, parents and teachers.

"It's a good feeling to feel like you're doing something that's necessary and helpful," she said.

Melloney W.A. Johnson, coordinator of professional school counseling at Matoaca High, said Newton is more like family to the school.

"Anabel has lived our motto ["Be Kind"] within and without the confines of her job description," she said. "She alters the costumes for the music department [and] makes window treatments to beautify our school. I will truly miss her."

Newton said she will continue volunteering at the school, sewing costumes for Zach, a yellow Labrador, who assists teachers with reading, math and other lessons for special-education students.

Newton also plans to clean and maintain an interior courtyard, which is covered with knee-high weeds. She'll also baby-sit her 8-year-old granddaughter, Kasey Williamson.

"I might as well bring her here and wear her out," she said of her plans to clean the court. "Then we'll go home and get into the swimming pool and relax. That's our schedule for the rest of the summer."

Contact Juan Antonio Lizama at (804) 649-6513 or .