Eunice Kittie Newgard

Eunice was born July 25, 1934 to Dean and Ruby Knapton in West Allis, Wisconsin. She grew up with three brothers and two sisters attending Jefferson grade school, John Dewey Middle school, and Central High. After graduation at Allis Chalmers Co. where she met Pete.

The newly wed couple moved into army housing on Benicia Arsenal, Benicia, California where they lived until his discharge from the army in 1956. Son Michael was born in 1955 a the Mare Island Naval Hospital.

After Peter's stint in the Army he joined the staff of Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in Menlo Park Ca. as a research engineer. The family bought a house in a neighboring Redwood City where two more sons Robert (1958) and David (1960) were born.

For the first seven years at SRI Peter attended part time at Stanford University to earn is masters degree in mechanical engineering and then the degree of engineer in engineering mechanics.

By 1963 the family had outgrown the two bedroom home so Eunice and Pete, using their own labor, removed the roof and added a second story with four bedrooms and a bath.

About this time, both Eunice and Pete learned to fly and became involved in the sport of soaring. Having no spare money, they decided to build their own sail plane. It took almost a year to complete the wood and fabric ship which they both flew for the next several years.

About 1970 Pete began to sport of sail plane racing in sponsored contests with Eunice and kids serving as crew. This quickly became a consuming hobby for the next 30 years.

In 1975 Pete and a partner, started a small business to develop and manufacture an advanced sailplane instrument. This led to the development of a new form of industrial leak detector. This activity soon grew to consume all available spare time. In 1990 Pete and Eunice bought out their partner and Pete retired from SRI. With the kids on their own, Pete and Eunice moved with the company to Rainier, WA.