Robert Newcomb of O.C. Pioneer Family Dies at 80

Robert Henry Newcomb, whose family owned a shoe store for 60 years in downtown Santa Ana and was among Orange County’s earliest settlers, has died.

Newcomb passed away Tuesday afternoon at his ranch house on what remains of the property his grandfather purchased in 1883. He was 80.

His family’s deep ties to Orange County were a source of great pride to Newcomb, according to his oldest daughter, Nancy Parker, who added that his grandchildren are fifth-generation Southern Californians.

The longtime owner of Newcomb’s Shoes on 4th Street, Newcomb was a quietly gracious civic booster who stuck it out downtown long after shopping habits began to gradually change in the 1960s.

Eventually, said his wife, Doris, the marketplace left him. Customers flocked to suburban malls, and the customers in downtown Santa Ana wanted to pay less than he needed to charge for brands like Florsheim.

In 1980, he sold the store. Today, it houses a bustling, all-purpose business catering to Spanish speakers and offering check cashing, travel planning, makeup and ceramic Chihuahuas.

Newcomb’s family arrived in Orange County in 1883. His grandfather, Henry Hockemeyer, migrated from Indiana with a $2,600 inheritance. One of Hockemeyer’s four daughters was Newcomb’s mother.

In 1857, other farmers of German descent had founded what became the flourishing wine colony of Anaheim. According to “The History of Orange County” published in 1900, Hockemeyer bought 11 1/2 acres and decided to try his hand at grapes, but his timing was unlucky. Within only two years, disease had taken hold in the region’s vineyards and would eventually destroy them all. Hockemeyer turned to apricots and walnuts.

“Eventually,” the history book concluded, Hockemeyer “found with others that the soil was better adapted to citrus fruit culture, and now the ranch is in a high state of cultivation, producing Valencias, Mediterranean Sweets and Navels.”

A family homestead was built in 1920 on the property at the corner of Santa Clara and Tustin avenues in northeastern Santa Ana.

Three miles away in downtown Santa Ana, Newcomb’s father had entered the shoe business with an apprenticeship at a store called Turner’s, which he eventually bought in 1920.

Newcomb was born on May 26 that year. He attended Tustin Elementary School and graduated from Tustin High School, then went on to UCLA, where he attended the School of Business Administration.

During World War II, Newcomb was drafted into the Army. He was stationed at the Santa Ana Army Air Base, where he met the former Doris Mellott, a secretary for a commander. They married soon after, and a few months later Newcomb was sent to the Philippines and Japan.

After his discharge as a staff sergeant he joined his father in the shoe business on 4th Street.

“He enjoyed it, and his customers loved him,” Doris Newcomb said Wednesday of her husband.

Their home, built in 1952, faces Santa Clara Avenue and sits in front of the original homestead. The couple’s son and his family live in the older home.

Orange groves surrounded the homes until 1970, when developing the land became more profitable than farming it, the family said. Newcomb’s parents sold pieces of the property bit by bit, and today the Newcombs have only a few acres left. The corner is mostly commercial now.

Daughter Nancy Parker’s fondest childhood memories are from the shoe store, where she loved the wooden shoe stretchers and all the elaborate decorations her father used for sales and holiday festiveness.

But the Newcomb children always got their own footwear at a shop down the street. Their father believed children’s shoes were not his strength and carried only shoes for adults.

Nevertheless, there would be no scuffed shoes for the Newcomb kids. Every Saturday night after the store closed--those days it was opened six days a week--Newcomb came home and lined up his three children’s shoes “to spiff them up for church the next day,” his daughter recalled.

Grandson Ben Newcomb said he will most cherish his memories of “Grandy” aboard the Newcombs’ sailboat “Carefree.”

Newcomb is survived by his wife, Doris, by daughters Nancy Newcomb Parker of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., and Linda Foley of Irvine, by son Stephen Robert Newcomb of Santa Ana and by four grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Monday in the Waverley Church at Fairhaven Memorial Park & Mortuary, 1702 Fairhaven Ave., in Santa Ana. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in Newcomb’s memory to the hospice of VNA Home Health Services, 2500 Red Hill Ave., Suite 105, Santa Ana, or to any charity.