Family mourns nurse who died from COVID-19

Click here for updates on this story

    OMAHA, Neb. (KETV) — Daphne Newton spent the past eight months on the COVID-19 pandemic frontlines, treating patients at CHI Health Immanuel Hospital. Newton caught the virus and died Tuesday.

Dozens gathered at the Thomas Funeral Home on Saturday to honor the life of the woman who embodied selflessness.

“If you needed a chance to start over, if you were going through tough times in life, you always had a place to stay with her,” her daughter Kaylee Weaver said.

From the bedside to the home, Newton’s children say she never stopped helping those around her.

Newton became a nurse in 1983.

“My momma didn’t do it for the money; she did it for the people,” her son Keith said.

Once the pandemic hit the metro, her day-to-day life intensified when her children say she started treating COVID-19 patients.

“The first day that she worked on that floor she came home crying,” Keith said.

Weaver reflected on “her seeing people dying every day, her taking care of these people, scared she’s going to get sick, scared she’s going to get her family sick.”

Weaver said that fear became a reality by the second week of November when Newton started experiencing symptoms.

“Before she went to the hospital, you can tell she was in a lot of physical pain,” Weaver said. “I was running all over the place trying to get cough medicine, and just getting whatever she told me to get.”

On Nov. 15, the 57-year-old nurse tested positive for COVID-19. Nine days later, she took her last breath.

“Seeing the nurses and the doctors come out of there crying in the hallways, it hit me hard,” her son Kelvin said.

Now, Newton’s children are holding on to memories and some of the most important lessons a mother could teach.

“I think if my mom taught me anything, she taught me how to be a good person and to love people and to value people,” Weaver said.

Keith said he didn’t believe in the virus at first, but this situation has been an eye-opener.

Newton’s husband is also fighting COVID-19 in the hospital.

The family will lay the nurse to rest in her home state of Oklahoma on Dec. 2.

Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.