Mar. 14—”There was an old woman who lived a shoe,” the children’s nursery rhyme goes.
And a large-scale, and quite-detailed, version of it — the shoe — lived at Pat Stewart’s house for a time when her kids were small.
“Everybody loved it,” Jeff Stewart said of the creation rendered by the hand of his mom, the once-and-future Morgantown real estate icon who died peacefully in her sleep last Saturday, just one week shy of her 96th birthday.
“We’d have all these kids coming by,” Pat’s daughter, Diane Lepley remembered.
The shoes were done out with windows, a belt buckle and the whole bit, she said.
It was fanciful, whimsical, creative and took a lot of work — “But that’s the kind of mom she was,” Lepley said.
“She was always doing things like that,” said the daughter, an attorney and former superior court judge who returned home to Morgantown, after three decades of practicing law in Washington, DC
Call it an early example of the importance of curb appeal, chuckled Jeff, who grew up in his mom’s Pat Stewart Realtors business, where he remains a realtor in his own right today.
Outwardly, she never seemed to take herself too seriously, her son said of the woman he always calls, “Pat,” whenever he speaks of her publicly.
There was, indeed, that little bit of whimsy, he said, to go with all that self-deprecating humor.
She loved a good “Pat Stewart story,” he said.
And any time someone would bust out an impression of her distinct, Gassaway, Braxton County twang — say, at a Rotary meeting or dinner — she would be reduced to red-faced guffaws.
However, Jeff said, like wall-to-wall carpeting over hardwood floors, her outward persona masked someone, who, in her profession, wasn’t always how she appeared.
That is, the outward fun of her personality masked as a serious businesswoman, he said. One who was a fierce competitor in Morgantown’s rascally, take-no-prisoners real estate market.
She wasn’t ruthless, he said.
Pat was in possession of a ton of ethics, he said.
However, he said, she was just plain tough.
As in, squaring up, “I’d like to see you try,” tough.
You don’t survive both a brain tumor and ovarian cancer without being that way, her son said.
With her husband, the late WVU journalism dean Guy Stewart, she founded Pat Stewart Realtors in 1973 — that watershed year of Billie Jean King, Bobby Riggs and the campy “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match, which King won.
It would take another year, however, before serious legislation was enacted that finally gave the right to a woman to apply for a credit card under her own name.
By then, the real estate company headed by a woman was stacking up sales and commissions like the traffic on 705 during the evening commute.
Stewart knew that area, by the way.
She knew every nook and cranny of every neighborhood.
That house with the sunroom that just might make the sale for the couple with the new baby?
Yep.
The one with crown molding and fireplace just right?
You got it.
That duplex on Darst or the mid-century ranch in leafy Suncrest?
Put the word out to Pat — she’ll tell you.
She could calculate square footage and acreage in her head, and could tell you within reason how much it might cost to convert part of the basement or garage into an office space.
Stewart could sing city and county code like Sunday morning, and the agents he recruited and hired knew the neighborhoods as well as their boss.
Her son and daughter could say they knew her before she was famous.
Except, that wouldn’t necessarily be accurate.
That’s because she’s always been famous to them.
Pat Stewart was born on St. Patrick’s Day.
She was christened, “Patricia,” the feminine version of the name of the saint who drove all those snakes out of Ireland, for that reason.
If luck enters in, though, the Stewart offspring assert, it was by way of their mother and father’s marriage.
Pat Stewart and Guy Stewart were 4-H’ers who met at Jackson’s Mill when they were kids.
That’s where Guy proffered the engagement ring just a few years later.
They had 70 years together. Guy Stewart was 95 when he died in 2019.
Like her husband, it was Pat’s wish to be cremated. Hastings Funeral Home and Omega Crematory are handling the arrangements.
Her funeral will be Friday — St. Patrick’s Day — at Wesley United Methodist Church on North High Street. Friends may call that day from 1-4 pm, the time of the service with the Rev. Martha Ognibene officiating.
Meanwhile, if you had called a certain real estate firm on St. Patrick’s Day 2022, you might have been surprised to have been greeted by a familiar voice on the other end of the line.
“Pat Stewart Realtors, this is Pat.”
Yes, she was working.
On her 95th birthday, she was working.
“Hey, what else am I gonna do?” she said then.
“I have to keep coming in. If I don’t, people will start realizing they don’t need me around anymore.”
Then she gave one of those patented, Pat Stewart laughed.
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