“I was Eleanore until I was 48,” she said. “I was having lunch with friends and I said, ‘I’m so bored with life; I want to change my name.’ We started passing names around the table and came up with Charming Ellie.” She snickered, but in a nice way. “The only people who call me Eleanore anymore I knew before I was 50, and they’re all dead now,” she said. Changing her name changed her whole personality, Newbauer insisted. “When I was Eleanore, I was very queenly; I really was,” she said with a laugh. “Eleanore is my higher self. Ellie is social.” After her husband died, Newbauer decided to build on to their Lake cottage. “I designed it and built it,” she said. “Oh my gosh, it was the coolest thing. I always wanted to build my own house.” The couple had bought the Lake house as a vacation spot, and moved in permanently in 2004. “John loved the water,” she said. “We just saw this property and thought it would be a great getaway. I love looking at the water, but I don’t like getting in it. I don’t like water higher than my ankles. But this Lake is beautiful; it’s always changing.” She is considering selling her home, however, and perhaps building another closer to Bracey, Va. “Bracey has wonderful energy fields,” Newbauer said. “I
20 | Lake the Magazine
love Bracey; I could be very comfortable there.” Newbauer enjoys her friends, groups in which she coordinates and participates, and her family. “I don’t have any friends over 70,” she said. “Older people sometimes lose interest in life.” Newbauer finds it impossible to be stagnant. “It’s just so much fun to think of different things to do, rather than the same old same old,” she stressed. The good life Newbauer said she has lived life on her own terms. “I guess I just found out who I was and lived that life, rather than the life other people thought I should be living,” she said. She said she could be defined as a rebel. “My dad called me Bullhead because I was so stubborn,” she said, laughing. “But (life) is either going to work or it’s not. A lot doesn’t work out, but a lot does. I will never accomplish everything I want to accomplish, but that’s okay; I’ll do it in the next one.” Newbauer said she has her next life mapped out. “I decided in my next life, I will become a rock singer and John’s going to be my PR person,” she said. She realizes her current singing voice is nothing to rave about, and remembered singing in church with John. “He would lean over and say, ‘Just mouth the words,’” she