Jack Newell Obituary

Former Polk County Assessor Jack E. Newell, 97, of Ames, and formerly of Bondurant and Altoona, died on July 11, 2025, at Northridge Retirement Community in Ames.
Mass of Christian Burial will be held on Thursday July 17, 2025, at 10:30 a.m., at St. Mary's Catholic Church, 406 NW Washington Avenue, Elkhart, Iowa. Burial will follow at Glendale Cemetery.
Visitation with family greeting friends will be held at the church on Wednesday July 16, 2025 from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Jack was born on March 28, 1928, to John W. and Hazel Hirschman Newell. He graduated from Bondurant High School in 1945 and from Drake University. He worked in Polk County government for 41 years, serving as Polk County Assessor from 1974 to 1996 before retiring.
Jack married Mary Flannery on August 17, 1957 at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Elkhart, Iowa. Mary worked in the Polk County Auditor's Office. They celebrated their 59th wedding anniversary shortly before Mary's death on September 9, 2016. Jack lived most of his life in the Bondurant and Altoona area, moving to the Prairie Vista Retirement Community in 2016 and then to the Northridge Retirement Community in 2024.
Jack loved the Iowa State Fair and attended it daily nearly every year. He enjoyed taking family and friends there to enjoy the food, concerts, animal barns, and the Ye Old Mill. He also enjoyed gardening and tending to the flowers that were plentiful around his home in Bondurant. After moving into a retirement community, Jack enjoyed watching the birds eat at the feeder by his window.
Above all, Jack was a man of deep and abiding prayer. One of his favorite spiritual guides was Msgr. John J. McIlhon (1922-2006), whose book Forty Days Plus Three profoundly shaped Jack's prayer life. He often reflected on these words from the book, which became the cornerstone of his own faith journey:
"We persevere in prayer not to get God's attention. We persevere in prayer that God might get our attention. Prayer transforms our identity so that we begin to see with the light of grace our own responsibility and our own part in the building of a better world."
For Jack, prayer was not simply a habit, it was a way of seeing the world and his place within it. It deepened his compassion for others, sustained his hope, and guided him every day. To honor Jack's legacy, he would gently encourage you to make prayer an essential part of your own life -a daily source of strength, reflection, and grace through life's joys and hardships. In doing so, you will continue his quiet, faithful work of building a more compassionate and grace-filled world.
Jack is survived by his daughter, Ann (Bob) Guthrie; grandsons, Luke (Dawn) Guthrie and Lionel (Cyreen) Silverston; four great-grandchildren; sisters-in-law, Helen Newell and Suzie Flannery; and many nieces and nephews.
He was preceded in death by his wife, Mary; his parents, John and Hazel Newell; brother, Jim Newell; sister, Betty Thomsen; sisters-in-law, Rita Smith and Kay Ross; brothers-in-law, Francis Thomsen, Don Smith, Bill Ross and John Flannery; and his father and mother-in-law, Leo and Bertha Flannery.
In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to St. Mary's Holy Cross Catholic Church, 406 Washington Avenue, Elkhart, Iowa 50073 or to the Iowa State Fair Blue Ribbon Foundation P.O. Box 57130, 3000 E Grand Avenue, Des Moines, IA 50317.