Arwen Newman . . . .

joined Sonoran Bells in 2009. She got into bells when her younger sister and fellow Sonoran Bells member Allyn Baker convinced her to join the newly forming Jubilate Ringers of St. Philip's in the Hills in 2004. (There wasn't much kicking and screaming involved.) The sisters have also performed duets as "Hermanas de Carillones."  Her musical experience has included indifferent attempts to play piano, flute, and folk harp. She is also more enthusiastically an alto member of the Faculty Choir at Palo Verde High School where she teaches English.

Her high school students are most interested to learn that Arwen and her husband collect cars, including a Ghostbusters Ecto-1A replica and other Cadillac hearses and ambulances. The retrieval of one of those ambulances from Toronto, Ontario, revealed that vintage ambulances can be more photogenic than Niagara Falls. During the same trip, she and her husband also discovered that shearing lug nuts and losing an entire rear wheel and tire on the freeway in Indiana means a few moments of utter terror followed by a full day of waiting on the roadside while the tow truck drivers try to find a big white ambulance. Although, they did break down near the one little town still running an ambulance of the same era so the local NAPA carried the correct shocks and brake parts to get them back on the road.

Somewhat less interesting to Arwen's students is that she is a genealogist who participates as registrar, teacher and web manager for Arizona State Genealogical Society. However, students usually like her website atwww.findyourdead.com -- yes, that is a dead guy at the top!