Rod M. Stewart

Rod M. Stewart, 76, died September 27, 2021. Visitation will be from 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm, Tuesday, October 5, 2021, at Downing & Lahey East Mortuary. Funeral Service will be at 10:00 am, Wednesday, October 6, 2021, at Eastminster Presbyterian Church. The funeral service will be live streamed and available to view by clicking "Watch Event" below. Graveside Service will follow at 2:00 pm, at White Chapel Memorial Gardens. Preceded in death by his parents, Daniel and Betty Stewart. Survived by his wife, Deborah; son, John (Hope) Stewart of Lexington, KY; grandchildren, Pierce and Eliza Stewart; sister, Sherry Lou (David) Waters of Manhattan, KS; sister-in-law, Lisa (Rick) Borlase-Gehrer of Wichita; brothers-in-law, Bob Borlase, Rod (Candy) Borlase, Dr. Brad Borlase. In lieu of flowers, memorials have been established with: American Kidney Fund, 11921 Rockville Pike, Ste. 300, Rockville, MD 20852; American Diabetes Association, P.O. Box 7023, Merrifield, VA 22116. In his blocks on the offensive line at both East High School and then at the University of Kansas, opposing defensive players learned quickly that Rod Stewart did not dink around. He did not dabble. Not ever. The boy came to play. All in, all out, he led his football years as he did all the wondrous time following -- as if a knowing cavalry followed him headlong into the stuff of daily living. Rod found joy everywhere. He believed that the American Dream contained no reservations, no exclusionary clauses. And he sought their best selves in everyone he met as, day after day, Rod Stewart went about his profession with a strict and sure conscience and, without fail, that massive heart of his. Back then, he ran the handcars at Kiddie Land for thirty-five cents an hour. He worked construction. He hung onto the wrong end of a trash truck. He wanted desperately to attend the United States Air Force Academy, only an inherited asthma strong enough to stand in his way. He served as a senator in the Student Government Association at Wichita State University. He graduated in 1968 with a degree in political science. His first job thereafter at the Wichita Area Chamber of Commerce introduced him to the community’s power structure and thereby helped him make true and personal connections with important people, a gift of early friendships who would, lifelong, serve him, and them, so well. Three years later a career placement officer at WSU advised him toward real estate. He took up with the iconic Colby Sandlian, and Rod learned in Colby the certain notion that every deal is doable. With Sandlian Management a mighty fine place to start, Rod bent toward public life in Kansas’ largest city, and the organizational capital letters began to accumulate: the Center City Steering Commission, the Wichita Crime Commission, the Women’s Research Institute, Historic Wichita Cowtown, the Urban Renewal Agency, the Economic Development Commission, the Wichita Association of Realtors, the Sports Commission Taskforce, and the Wichita Convention and Visitors Bureau in which capacity he brought to his hometown the Miss USA Pageant and both the Women’s and the Men’s National Bowling Congress Tournaments. Throughout all his public accomplishments, however, he remained a goofball, an individual hoot. Once, in the locker-room of the gym where he lifted weights with his colleagues, he wrapped a towel around his waist and, greatly corny, he proclaimed himself Conan The Realtor. His decades-long involvement with the Wichita Wagonmasters created both a litany of good causes served and a somewhat shorter litany of topics best not discussed right now, right here. In 1983, he inaugurated Rod M. Stewart Realtor. For eight years thereafter, he understood that, in commercial real estate as in life itself, there come no pat answers. Only holy reply to the requests made daily of us all. Enlivened by his work, as a lone bad lobo, and then as a founding partner of Snyder, Sheets, Stewart, and Goseland, Rod relaxed some, his rediscovered Christianity telling him that all would yet be well, if only he kept steady hope, a quiet and easy faith. The earthly honors came still. Full membership in the Society of Exchange Counselors (SEC), invitation only, maybe a hundred members in all of North America, the half-wall golden plaque coming his way in 1997 for the most creative transaction thereto - Rod bobbing and weaving among thirteen lawyers in nine states and seven different properties, the least among them a hundred-unit apartment project on far South Seneca. He sold the old Montgomery Ward Building at 401 East Douglas. He sold Sutton Place, its multi-tenant, multi-floor spaces to a group calling itself The Minnesota Guys, a purchase in which Rod shared in the rebuilding of Wichita’s downtown corridor. He brought his determination, his mettle to the board of directors of Certified Commercial Investment Members (CCIM), perhaps real estate’s most prestigious organization. He dissolved, all tears and disbelief, when told that he was the most deserving winner of CCIM’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Again, the capital letters for a truly passionate, once explosive and opinionated, but now happily a small-caps sort of guy. With loose dreams but with, as usual, specific supporting data attached, he wrote a commentary in the Wichita Eagle on September 29, 1999. His topic: a growth ring to be imposed by local government, allowing in-fill projects within the arbitrary circle but with near total prohibition of residential or commercial growth beyond Sedgwick County commissioners’ ideas of where Wichita ought to grow. Rod wrote, “Citizens should be free to live where they want to live even if the planning department doesn’t like their choices. Property rights are among the oldest and most cherished freedoms of American citizens. I speak about our freedom to choose and your desire to control. Somehow, I believe the citizens will win.” He sought out young people new to commercial real estate, and he wrapped an over-large arm around them and taught them and mentored them, a universal dad, his paternal help a rolling light across new careers, new lives. Even as his life with Debbie found ongoing happiness, most especially after John, and love that encompassed all. Debbie and Rod raised him ramrod straight, a youngster of great good cheer, a young man who lived to learn and, like his dad, to laugh loud and often. Now a physician practicing medicine in Lexington, Kentucky, John and his wife Hope have given the Stewarts Pierce and Eliza. And the sunshine seems to walk beside them A man in pursuit of a closing need never get old. He worked until his failing health at last forced him to the sidelines of a fifty-year game. Rod deteriorating in nineteen different ways, the treatment of his illnesses imposed an unbending discipline, the dialysis part of a weeklong cycle of not much. But still Rod found, as always he did, some romance in the tedium of assisted dying, a little adventure when finally there’s no one left to serve. His reading broadened. On topics lying well beyond complex, he went deep into the answers. Professors of military history might stand to learn a thing or two from Rod M. Stewart, Realtor. In one of his last written statements, a mutual expression of thanksgiving with his beloved Debbie, he topped the page: “I am a Christian. God loves me and forgives me so that I will have a place in heaven.” A light has gone out hereabouts. But just about now, Rod’s Maker is shaking a genuinely big man’s hand, this deal done right and true, old Conan at rest at last.

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