While attorney Jack Stewart was not a Hillsboro native, he was the city’s biggest champion, his family says.
“He had his fingers on the pulse of the community,” said Edith Stewart, his wife of 62 years. “He knew what was going on everywhere, knew the individuals involved in every organization.”
Oldest son Bret, 61, agreed.
“Hillsboro was a great spot for him because it was small enough he could have his finger in everything,” Bret said.
Mr. Stewart died Oct. 14 of complications from Parkinson’s disease.
He grew up in Kahoka, a small farming community in northeastern Missouri. One day he entered the soda fountain where young Edith Baird was working and ordered a “pine float.”
“I had no idea at first,” Edith said. “Then he explained it meant a glass of water and a toothpick – he was broke.”
The two dated through high school, and after his 1959 graduation, Jack headed to the University of Missouri in Columbia to study agriculture.
He and Edith were married in 1961 and welcomed Bret nearly a year later, while Jack was still in college.
At that time, every male student was required to participate in ROTC, Edith said
“Every Friday, he wore his uniform to school and they did training on the campus,” she said. “I used to take our son to watch them.”
Mr. Stewart soon developed an interest in law.
“He’d go to Fort Leonard Wood during breaks from school and work in the law offices there,” Edith said. “He also worked at the law library at Mizzou.”
He graduated in 1965 with the university’s first agricultural law degree, as well as a juris doctorate, and then sat for the bar exam a month later.
His first Army assignment was in the judge advocate general’s office in Charlottesville, Va. The couple’s second son, Nathan, was born when they lived there.
Mr. Stewart’s next assignment was at The Presidio in San Francisco, where he learned to love working on court cases. He also was assigned to “body duty,” escorting the remains of soldiers who died in the Vietnam Warto their hometowns and helping families with arrangements.
Soon after that, Mr. Stewart was sent to Europe.
“He was assigned to Germany, the judge advocate general corps in the 5th Army division,” Edith said. “We drove to Missouri, spent some time with our families and then went on to Fort Dix, N.J., and left from there.”
During their three years in Germany, the Stewarts welcomed a third son, John, born in 1968 in Frankfurt.
Edith said the family had lots of adventures during that assignment.
“We went camping all over Europe – Germany, France, Holland, Italy,” she recalled. “We had some wonderful experiences and saw so many historic places and things.’”
Back in the states, Mr. Stewart was assigned to Fort Sheridan near Chicago.
“He had requested an assignment that would put us in driving range of Kahoka since his father was not doing well,” Edith said. “But they wouldn’t.”
While Mr. Stewart wrestled with the idea of leaving the military, he attended the Missouri Bar Association convention, where he was offered a position with what is now the Wegmann Law Firm in Hillsboro.
After Edith looked the place over, he accepted the job and stayed, eventually becoming a senior partner. He retired in 2014.
Mr. Stewart’s sons say he was an involved father.
“When all the cousins got together, he’d cut cane poles and take us fishing in one of the farm ponds,” Bret said. “He built a treehouse for us. He liked to sing to us. He took us all on float trips.”
He was involved with the Boy Scouts and coached his sons’ Little League teams.
“I can’t tell you how many times he’d get tied up in court, and I’d load the boys and all the equipment, go to the field and get one of the dads to get them started until Jack got there,” Edith said.
Mr. Stewart belonged to what his son calls “The Horseshoe Gang.”
“He built two pits in their backyard, regulation size,” Bret said. “Every Wednesday night, a bunch of local guys would get together and drink beer and pitch horseshoes.”
Mr. Stewart was involved with the local Rotary Club, the Hillsboro Community Civic Club and Hillsboro Presbyterian Church. He held a seat on the Jefferson College Foundation board for years.
“I think he enjoyed helping the people in the area develop and move forward,” Bret said. “But he didn’t always win. About 20 years ago, he had lined up enough land for purchase between Festus and Mapaville for an airport, and it got defeated.”
Around that time, he began to exhibit worrying memory symptoms. With a family history of Alzheimer’s disease, he was placed in a long-term Alzheimer’s study at Washington University.
He also went for extensive testing, which showed he had none of the markers associated with Alzheimer’s but was affected with Parkinson’s disease.
Over the past 10 years, the disease gradually eroded his ability to walk, talk, eat and more.
“He wound up in the hospital, and the doctor said I couldn’t take him back home, that he needed skilled 24-hour care,” Edith said.
Mr. Stewart spent the last part of his life at Bethesda Southgate, where family and friends visited frequently. He was placed on hospice on Oct. 1 and died peacefully less than two weeks later.
Edith said burying her husband in Hillsboro was a choice he would have agreed with.
“This is our home. He loved it here and this is where he wanted to be.”
“Life Story,” posted Saturdays on Leader Publications’ website, focuses on one individual’s impact on his or her community.