Tony Newhall

Tony Newhall died on Friday, 25 September 2026, in Valencia, California, at the age of 85, after a long illness. SCVNews reported the death on 2 October 2026; The Signal and Hometown Station / KHTS also published obituaries in late September. No more specific medical cause was made public. Family spokesperson Mario Einaudi, his son-in-law, asked for privacy. Services were pending at the time of those reports. He is survived by his wife of 44 years, Reena Newhall, four children, and seven grandchildren.

Anthony "Tony" Newhall was born on 18 March 1941 in Palo Alto, California, to Scott and Ruth Newhall. He was a twin to Jonathan Newhall. The town of Newhall takes its name from his great-great-grandfather Henry Mayo Newhall, a Gold Rush pioneer who founded the settlement in 1876. Tony grew up in Berkeley and graduated from Stanford University in 1964 with a B.A. in economics.

Inspired by a Sargent Shriver recruiting talk, he joined the Peace Corps. After three months of Spanish and regional training at Cal State Los Angeles he served in Peru from 1964 to 1966 as a cooperativista helping found and grow credit unions. He briefly returned to Stanford Business School, then worked at a cousin's H. M. Newhall Import-Export Company in San Francisco, on Harold Dobbs's 1967 mayoral campaign, and in sales for a West Indian trading company before settling in the Santa Clarita Valley in 1968.

Newhall joined The Signal in 1968, working with his father Scott Newhall and twin brother Jonathan, the paper's editor. He started as circulation manager, became general manager, and was named publisher in 1977. He led the paper until 1988. In the 1980s he sat on the board of the California Newspaper Publishers Association and was elected its president in 1986.

In 1989 he moved back to the Bay Area for ten years as associate publisher of the San Francisco Chronicle. After returning to the Santa Clarita Valley in 1999 he helped with financial management of the Cinema Park shopping center and assisted at A Chorus Line, his daughters' dancewear and costume business. From 1992 he also served on the board of the Henry Mayo Newhall Foundation, which awards grants to California charities.

Soon after arriving in the valley in 1968 Newhall joined the board of the Newhall Boys' Club, later the Boys & Girls Club of SCV. In 1972 he founded the Boys Club Auction and chaired the live auction for roughly a decade. He was named Boys & Girls Club Man of the Year in 1972 and 1980 and served as board president in 1980. The club's Tony Newhall Volunteer of the Year Award is named for him. He also served the Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital Foundation, United Way campaigns, the SCV Historical Society, and the founding board of Friends of Hart Park. In 1985 he was named Santa Clarita Valley Man of the Year.

In 1975 he took dance classes at Reena's Dance Studio in Saugus to improve his social skills. He and Reena married on 13 February 1982, with a reception on the Royal Viking Star. They taught ballroom and disco locally and, from 1980, dance lessons on Delta Cruise Lines routes between Los Angeles and Vancouver. He was preceded in death by his parents, sister Penny (1955), twin Jonathan (2021), and older brother Skip (2025). He is survived by Reena, four children, and seven grandchildren.

Newhall's legacy runs through both print and philanthropy in the Santa Clarita Valley. As Signal publisher and later California Newspaper Publishers Association president he linked a family paper to statewide press leadership. As founder of the Boys Club Auction and namesake of the Tony Newhall Volunteer of the Year Award he left a fundraising tradition that former Boys & Girls Club CEO Jim Ventress called the club's biggest annual event. Colleagues remembered an "old soul" who sought ways to help without wanting credit. The valley that bears his family's name remembers him as 1985 Man of the Year and a steady board member across hospital, historical, and park causes.