Thursday, June 12, 2008

Stewart R. Mott, RIP

Andrea James

A few years ago, I got a rather amazing note via a high-end matchmaking service. I was invited to Bermuda by Stewart Mott for a weekend date. Now, being an ultra-liberal, I knew exactly who he was. The dude was on Nixon’s Enemies List (the original short list, as was a founder of the ad agency at which I worked). That is quite a pedigree!

Stew owned a castle and was quite the cutting-edge thinker and apparently had a thing for younger women. He sent me a lot of funny emails with couplet rhymes…

noting our age difference:

When in ‘73 Nixon was up to his tricks,
you were merely at the age of six !

I won’t share many other details, but the notes were, shall we say, colorful…

Bermuda beckons and I reckon that you
would have both hands full with a devil like Stew.

I am sure he was right. At the time, I had already met someone through that service and decided not to go. Plus, he could have been my father. Plus, I hadn’t gotten into my whole history and didn’t really feel like doing it via email. In retrospect, I regret not going greatly, if not just to hang out with a 20th-century icon of activist philanthropy.

• New York Times obit
• Multimedia piece on Stew
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