Gee Stuart Memories

By Roy Bell, Marj Weir, Kathy Harleman, Sue Tepas, Karleen Hoerr, Jo Ann Vatcha

April–May 2013

Gee Stuart with friends. Individual companions not separately captioned.

Historical April–May 2013 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.

Editor’s Note: These are some of the memories received by the TIMES, edited for space.

To read the complete texts of these, or to add your own memories, go to our website, http:// SDTIMES.org. from Roy Bell: With the passing of Gee Stuart we lost a friend and supporter who was important and dear to us collectively and individually. Husband Cal Stuart, long-time Executive Director of SDCC, would agree that he was a better leader because of Gee.

With their experience in the neighborhood and their business managing rental property, she was the perfect candidate for Mayor Schoemehl to appoint as the director of Operation Impact.

She understood that to have good, vibrant neighborhoods you need good homeowners, landlords, and tenants. At Operation Impact she used Federal block grant funds to deal with problem properties, a position she successfully held under four different mayors. Cal and Gee were fiercely loyal to the neighborhood and to the city.

I don’t know that they ever purchased anything in the County.

They bought their groceries at the Schnucks on Arsenal.

When we drove them home from poker at the Lawrenz’ in DeSoto, they would point out the restaurants and meat markets they frequented, not to mention the places on the Hill where they now lived. And that loyalty showed in whatever gathering they attended.

I don’t know how many people they introduced me to with “this is so&so, they live on the XXXX block of **** and they are doing such and such there”.

It was a subtle form of community building. Like the prototypical St. Louis question of “Where did you go to High School?”, she was saying “This is what they are doing to make Skinker-DeBaliviere a better place to live.” We all miss Gee.

I am especially going to miss her at our monthly poker games, not the least of which was her appetite. You would think that four Amighetti sized sandwiches would be enough to feed eight people but I would always figure on five sandwiches.

After the night was over Pat and I would ask the same question: where does this tiny little woman put all that food? Truth be told, Gee wasn’t a good poker player. Well, she was good when the card gods smiled on her but so are we all.

She was, however, a very good gambler.

In the early days of the poker club, when Gee’s drink of choice was bourbon, as opposed to the latter days when her drink of choice was diet root beer, she would curl up on the couch once she lost her initial stake of $5 and nap till the game was finished.

In the root beer period she would sit with us and watch as the less savvy gamblers continued to lose money.

There is a lesson in there somewhere.

I always considered Cal and Gee, along with so many others, as founders of the neighborhood.

Now Gee has gone to join too many others and I hope we continue to honor their legacy. from Kathy Harleman: When I remember Gee, the first thing that comes to mind is her smile, that smile that seemed to stretch from one high cheekbone to the other and made her eyes dance.

My children remember a different side of Gee–very strict and demanding good manners. That directness made her easy to work with.

I never had to wonder what she was really thinking; she told me. Gee was fierce in the love of her family. Cal, Sarah, C.T. and Allison were her first priorities.

She was dedicated to doing excellent work.

When she was a nurse, she would forego alcohol and go home early to get enough sleep if she had to work the next day.

I have a kaleidoscope of Gee images: Gee, the crossing guard; Gee, sneaking up to the Sinclair station to buy cigarettes before she “kicked the habit;” Gee in her high school formal at the neighborhood prom held at St. Roch’s; Gee with her beagles. Oh, and did I mention—Gee smiling. from Marjorie Weir: We all knew her as “Gee,” but she was Georgiana inside – dignified, independent, reliable, determined, versatile, and lovely.

She and I worked together as co-chairs of one of the House Tours that were part of the annual Mother’s Day Art Fair.

She really knew what she was doing, whereas I was the newbie. When, on the morning of Mother’s Day, she found out that the residents of one of the featured homes had taken a notion to paint the walls the previous night, she didn’t lose her cool.

The mess was addressed and the tour went right on.

She started, built and ran her own property management business for a number of years.

It was named McPherson Management for the street on which she and Cal had one of their homes.

I worked for her for a few years as she built the business. No one could ask for a more attentive or conscientious manager.

She and Cal have been an essential part of our personal lives and certainly of the growth and success of the neighborhood.

We are grateful. from Karleen Hoerr: I think Gee was a great community leader and urban pioneer, a friend to all, what a pleasure to know her.

I remember when we had the first prom.

We collected pennies to see who would be queen.

It is possible she opened her kids piggy banks, she was going to win and she did.

She was competitive in the best way.

She was a great racquet ball player and has the trophies to prove it. Both she and Cal made the difference in making our neighborhood what it is today.

When Tom and I moved into the neighborhood she invited us in with open arms, we knew we were welcomed and it made a difference, I always wanted to be the woman she was. from Sue Tepas: I first met Gee in 1968, when my husband, Don, and I moved to McPherson Avenue. I’d been married for 9 years, had held a job, been to graduate school, and was now a faculty wife and political activist.

In the next few years, we were adopting a baby boy and then a baby girl, and I was a doting mother.

I thought I was a grown-up, sure as anything.

But Gee taught me that there was a lot more to being a grown-up. Not that she sat me down and lectured me, but she SHOWED me what I could possibly be. Organized, planning ahead, thinking of others and how to help them, knowing what she could do well, NOT trying to do anything else unless she could give it her all, enjoying all the little things that so often pass us by without our knowing, and, most of all, having fun doing what she did.

I remember now what a great neighborhood that was, how we all tried to work together to make it better, and how hard we worked at it. And at the center were Cal and Gee Stuart, always doing just a little bit more, a little bit better, than most anybody could imagine.

My family and I remember Gee fondly. from Jo Ann Vatcha: Cal and Gee Stuart have been such an important part of our neighborhood life.

We bought our house due to the strong urgings of Cal as neighborhood director.

I learned of all the smart women in the neighborhood, and, before I knew it, I was volunteering for the Art Fair (Gee asked me to order the porta-potties).

A decade later, our work lives again intersected, and I was thrilled to have Gee as “boss” at Operation Impact. What a team we had!

As our longtime financial manager Lorna wrote in a fun piece called the “Flood of ’93,”…Operation Impact was a small group of development experts sometimes compared to a MASH unit. And, yes, if you thought about it, you could liken it to a medical emergency unit.

The director of the unit was a registered nurse and the rest of the staff was SICK!” Gee was that rare manager who was both very particular and still fun, a stickler for rules and the time clock, but more than once we got in trouble because we were “laughing too much”.

If you can lead a team in putting millions of dollars into rebuilding neighborhoods and still be accused of having too much fun, you must be doing something right.

She retired as the City’s Director of Real Estate.