John "Jack" Stewart's Obituary
Jack Stewart grew up on the north east corner of Avalon and Henry just behind Little Flower Church in a hot pink Spanish-style house. His parents were founders of Stewart’s, a snack food company; they were junk food pioneers. Lunch every Sunday at his house was a Board of Directors’ Meeting. There’s no wonder he grew up to be a personnel attorney. Jack’s love of military history may have originated in family gatherings which invariably included reverent recollections of his eldest brother, Billy who died in World War II when Jack was an infant. Jack spent six weeks in isolation with polio between first and second grade. When he recuperated, the boys in the neighborhood played knee football to include him in the game. Everyone from the fourth grade up played on their knees. Jack learned to swim in Billy Loeb’s pool with its fireman’s pole access from the master bathroom. He loved to swim and delighted in countless happy hours spent with his children in their backyard pool. The girls weren’t quite so thrilled with the Saturday mornings spent cleaning the pool. He and his nephew Vance coached a third grade girls’ basketball team. He had one little girl leave the team. She said all that snatching and grabbing for the ball was just too rude. Another little girl from India refused to run the length of the court. “They’ll be right back,” she said. Jack scheduled so many games that December the mothers threatened to revolt. He left no time for Christmas. Jack was the only father who sat in on his daughter’s high school basketball practices. He taught all the children to drive and speaking of driving, drove them all crazy singing The Streets of Laredo all the way to church. He spent a brief period on a wheelchair basketball team but had to drop out. All the other players were disabled Viet Nam vets on disability while he had to get up and go to work the next morning. Jack was a swash buckler bridge player. He thought every hand had potential for game in Three No Trump. When he retired, Jack quit carrying a wallet and kept his money stashed in the glove box of his 2004 Buick. The family referred to it as The First National Buick. Every mid-day Jack and Jackie went for a ride. Jackie wore a straw hat; Jack, the wraparound sunglasses required by cataracts. George, their Better Than Standard Poodle, sat straight up in the middle of the back seat surveying traffic. The sticker on the back bumper read Fatalism Our Only Hope. John R. (Jack) Stewart was educated in the Memphis parochial schools, earned a BA in history from Vanderbilt in 1966. He was a member of Phi Kappa Sigma. He finished law school at Vanderbilt in 1970. He worked briefly for Fowler, Young and Pearl, a Labor Law firm before joining the Law Department of Schering Plough where he worked from 1971 to 2000. He and Jackie Ellis were married in 1968 and had four children: Virginia Lee Mueller (Billy and son, Becher) of Germantown, Kathleen Vance Jordan (Matthew and sons Jack and daughter-in-law, Brooklyn and Owen) of Germantown, Emily Stewart Jones (Dennis and daughter, Teresa) of Basking Ridge, NJ; and Lee McDaniel Stewart of Sacramento, California. Services for Jack will be held on Thursday, February 19 at Memorial Park with visitation from 10 to 11 am and burial at 11:30 at Calvary. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to St. Jude, The Church Health Center or the Memphis Food Bank.
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