Local business consultant begins the next chapter

Dunbar Norton says he has lived two lives.
 
“I have what I consider my Army life, which lasted thirty years,” he said. “And I have what I call my second life.”
 
Norton was drafted into the service in September of 1944 and retired from his last position in the Army in 1974 as executive officer at Yuma Proving Ground. Since then, he has been a business executive and consultant in Yuma.
 
“I was going to get out of the Army at the end of World War II," he said. "But I ended up signing on with the Reserves and enrolling in ROTC while I went to the University of Oregon. They paid me $26 per month, which was beer money.”
 
Newly graduated and newly married, Norton elected to join an Army program called a Competitive Tour of Duty. He ended up at Ft. Hood, Texas, where he was commissioned into the regular Army.
 
“Like most Army officers, I had a lot of different tours of duty,” he said, “but my last assignment was as executive officer at Yuma Proving Ground. I drove in on Highway 95 from the north, so it was actually quite a while before I even drove into the town of Yuma.”
 
When his tour of duty at YPG was over, the Army wanted to send him to Germany.
 
“What was I going to do in Germany?" he asked. "I would spend a two-year tour there, and then come back to the United States, where my wife and I would have to start all over again. So I retired.”
 
Shortly after retiring, Norton noticed an ad in the paper placed by the Yuma County Chamber of Commerce seeking a new economic development director.
 
 He applied for the job and was hired.
 
“I worked in that position until 1983," he said. "During that period, I’m most proud of landing Russell Coil and their large facility. Finally, it reached a point where I just felt it was time to change jobs, so I resigned.”
 
Norton did not spend much idle time just sitting around. “I went to work for a company called Lincoln Enterprises, which was owned by a man in Iowa who wanted to develop some parcels of land that he owned in Yuma. I worked for them for about four years and developed several parcels of land for them. Then I felt it was time to move on again.”
 
According to Norton, it was about this time he thought of opening his own business consulting firm.
 
“I started the consulting business in 1987. I rented a small office and I decided to make use of all the information I had been gathering on the economics of Yuma. So I started the Norton Report, a monthly newsletter that made economic projections for the Yuma area. It was the basis for my business.”
 
Norton published his monthly newsletter until 2005.
 
“One of the things I am really proud of was the foundation of the Yuma Executive Association, which was started in 1987," he said. "A bunch of senior executives got together to form an association that would exist to pass along helpful economic information. I wrote the bylaws and organized the finances. I’m happy to say that the association now has more than 60 members.”
 
In addition to his consulting business, Norton was chairman of the Yuma Census Committee for the years of 1970, 1980, 1990 and 2000. He also helped organize the Yuma County Industrial Development Authority and the Greater Yuma Economic Development Corp.
 
Asked about his plans for the future, Norton replied, “I love to travel. We’ll be taking as many trips as possible. We (Norton and his second wife, Mary. He lost his first wife to cancer in 1994) are planning a trip to Houston in June and then later in the summer, we’re flying to Rome to take a cruise of the eastern Mediterranean."
 
He said they also plan to spend a lot of time with their 11 grandchildren.
 
It’s apparent that even though Dunbar Norton said he has led two lives, he is energetically on his way to a third.