NORMAN C. HORTON Storyteller sought material from his roots
To his children, Norman C. Horton said, “Never forget where you come from.” And he didn’t. When he told stories — on the phone, at the kitchen table, at work — he spoke with an animation that might rival the color of the anecdotes themselves.
“He would definitely build up to the punch line,” Rebecca Penovich, his daughter, said.
Written accounts of times gone by bloomed beneath the command of his narrative voice — a culmination of a success wrought from decades of work, decades spent writing.
“I think he believed in the power of the pen ...” Penovich said. “It was something he could do easily and quickly and get his opinion across. It was a forum for him.”
In addition to his letters to the editor, something which began in his early years to the St. Paul Pioneer Press and extended to those he wrote to the Orlando Sentinel, Horton also painted a picture of an earlier time in his contributions to the Sentinel’s “I Remember When…” column.
An ardent newspaper subscriber, Norman C. Horton was the recipient of five separate publications at the time of his death.
Norman C. Horton Sr. died March 30 of complications from non-Hodgkin lymphoma. He would have turned 100 Sept. 15.
The near-centenarian’s tips for lasting health:
“Don’t drink, believe in God.”
don’t smoke, work
hard,
He told Penovich that work and intellectual stimulation provided the grease and momentum that enabled him to remain active.
In an excerpt from the 400-page book he wrote about his life, something that Penovich hopes to self-publish:
“When I was a youngster in school my mother told me, ‘Study hard, Norm. To be a good citizen you need to be industrious.’ So I carried a paper route of 135 papers, graduated high school with honors …
“Now I am 94 years old and working six days a week, minding my mother, being industrious, being a good citizen.”
Penovich said that her father had maintained a desk at J and B Used Auto Parts, the company he opened in 1975, until July.
After his service in the Army, and the Civilian Conservation Corps, Horton had worked at Ford Motor Co. and served in the Office of Strategic Services. Eventually he opened an auto-parts business in Minnesota and a sawdust business in Miami. He moved to Central Florida in the early ’70s.
He earned a pre-law degree from University of Miami.
His memory was a reservoir not limited to flashes from his childhood: He was born in 1915 to a farmer and his wife in Augusta, Wis., who ultimately wound up working a railroad restaurant before the Great Depression. Horton also possessed an incredible recollection of the literature he’d enjoyed, books that were stacked floor to ceiling on bookshelves in every home he’d ever own.
“Education was No. 1; he believed in that,” Penovich said.
In addition to daughter Rebecca Penovich, Norman C. Horton is survived by son Thomas N. Horton of Winter Springs; daughters Jo Ann Samuelson of San Diego and Jeanne Talmadge of St. Paul, Minn.; stepdaughters Jamey Lindenau of Shoreview, Minn., Connie Abbott-Foster of Woodbury, Minn., and Mari Lynn Fik of Chicago; stepsons Edward Abbott of Mattoon, Ill., and Andrew Abbott of St. Paul, Minn.; 19 grandchildren; and 21 great-grandchildren.
Holcomb-Henry-Boom-Purcell Funeral Home of Shoreview, Minn., is handling arrangements.