Mary G. Stewart

Mary Giordano Stewart, who first came to Montauk before the Hurricane of 1938 and played an important role in that community for most of her life, died at the Affinity Skilled Living and Rehabilitation center in Oakdale on April 17. She had been weakened after a bout with pneumonia in early March. She was 98.

Mrs. Stewart was born Jan. 29, 1919, in Manhattan, one of 10 children in the family of Ralph Giordano and the former Concetta Coppola. Her family moved to the Bronx when she was young, and she attended P.S. 71 in Pelham Bay and James Monroe High School in Soundview.

By the time she graduated from high school, her family had already begun visiting Montauk in the summer. She briefly attended the Rhodes Secretarial School, but “became disillusioned with secretarial work,” her family wrote. She loved to read and had competed in the Miss Bronx competition, and left secretarial school dreaming of moving to Paris and becoming an actress or designer. To make ends meet, she took a job as a receptionist with the Motor Hearse Association of New York. Her father, who owned a limousine business at the time, had helped her get that job, and when she left, he helped her get a job in the administration of Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, who was a client of his. She worked for Harry Levine, the commissioner of the Census of New York City.

It was Mr. Levine who taught her how to run an office. At the same time, she became her father’s representative to various civic, religious, and political organizations, volunteering on his behalf.

On weekends, the family destination was frequently Montauk, and the old Dickinson farm in Ditch Plain, which her father had purchased.

Seeking independence from her father, she took a job with the New York University School of Dentistry, and when World War II broke out, she went to work in a Western Electric factory.

In 1944, she met Calvin Stewart, a highly decorated staff sergeant with the Army Corps of Engineers, who was back from Europe. The two fell in love and were married on Nov. 12, 1946. They initially left New York, trying to make a home in several states. That ended when Mrs. Stewart’s father offered her husband a job. He had purchased the Lakeside Inn in Montauk, and wanted to renovate and expand it into a motel. While Mr. Stewart worked building the motel, now known as the Surf Lodge, his wife took on whatever task was needed, from taking reservations to changing sheets to chopping lettuce.

While they sometimes stayed at the Lakeside Inn, they eventually turned a small garage on the Dickinson farm into their home. Mrs. Stewart learned from her husband, a farm boy from Kentucky, how to raise chickens and vegetables.

They had two children, MaryEllen and Calvin Jr. Mrs. Stewart founded Montauk Scout Troop 136 and was later awarded a Golden Spark Plug by the Suffolk County Council of the Boy Scouts of America. She was a member of the Congregation at St. Therese of Lisieux Catholic Church, where she would organize fund-raisers for the March of Dimes.

She called herself “a perpetual volunteer,” her family wrote. She ran flu vaccine clinics and established a youth employment agency in Montauk. She also helped establish the Senior Nutrition Center at the Montauk Community Church.

In the 1980s, working with the Montauk Chamber of Commerce, Mrs. Stewart organized the Arts in Montauk program, with lectures, readings, art openings, and a youth drama club.

She was chairwoman of the Montauk AARP Chapter 2610. In the 1980s, AARP wanted her to take on the job of vice president, which she turned down because it would have required many trips to Albany, and her husband had become disabled. He died in 1989.

“Mary wrote poetry for herself, made crochet hats for gifts, maintained a large garden, and loved to cook,” her family wrote. “Her signature dish was eggplant Parmesan,” and she would bake several trays of it at a time and freeze them to share with friends or acquaintances who had been kind enough to lend her a hand or give her a ride back to her house from one of her frequent walks to town.

She was gregarious, and a storyteller, and those rides frequently led to deep friendships, her family said.

Besides her children, MaryEllen LeClerc and Calvin Stewart Jr., both of East Hampton, she is survived by three grandchildren, a great-grandson, and a sister, Ann Vasti of Summerville, S.C.

A wake was held at the Yardley and Pino Funeral Home in East Hampton last Thursday, with a funeral Mass at St. Therese being offered the next day. Father Thomas Murray officiated. She was buried at Calverton National Cemetery beside her husband.