So here's the backstory about the item that mentions Marjabelle Young Stewart in Friday's Top 5:
Last week I was working on a list called "Five Things to love about the Lowcountry," which was part of the prototype my wife Janet (our Content Development Editor and former chief designer) had come up with, and the first item was "Charm and etiquette." And I noticed that while everybody around here still talks about Charleston being the Most Polite City in America, we hadn't actually received that honor from etiquette writer Majabelle Young Stewart since January 2005.
Whilst poking around, I found out that nobody had received much of anything from Stewart since then. So after a little more research, I worded the original item to say that Stewart was 82 and -- bless her heart -- it would be impolite to complain about the fact that she hasn't said anything nice about Charleston in a couple of years.
Then on Monday I picked up the paper and there she was: in the obits section. And I found out all sorts of things about her. Marjabelle was raised in an orphanage, married at 17 to a prominent scientist, worked as a model, started her own modeling agency, became a popular Washington socialite and worked her way into prominence in her own right:
"Oh, I’m one that dated Jack Kennedy, you know," Stewart remembered with a smile. She was on top of the world, and her marriage with Young was fading. And although she now claims her relationship with Kennedy was platonic, she once described how he liked his morning waffles with warm butter and syrup.
And I'm thinking: Maybe this etiquette business is a bit more interesting than I'd thought.
She eventually divorced her first husband, married a lawyer and became a famous etiquette writer/educator/protocol expert. Marjabelle spent her final years in Kewanee, Illinois, and named Charleston America's Most Polite City from 1996-2005. I don't know whether that makes the real Charleston quite the nirvana of mannerliness that Mrs. Stewart believed it to be (yesterday I watched an irate man verbally assault a driver attempting to back up a trailer on King Street), but the Charleston of the mind is apparently a lovely place indeed.
Color Photo: Fred Zwicky, Peoria Journal-Star/PJNet.com. Original cutline: "Marjabelle Young Stewart laughs as she performs a puppet rendition of her children's storybook that teaches etiquette."
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