Beginning this month, columnist John Bloodsworth will nosh with neighbors, gathering the latest happenings and treasured remembrances with those who call 78209 home.
Author: John Bloodsworth
Pattie Stewart Calls Alamo Heights Home
The torrential floods caused by the recent rains reminded me of a tenacious neighbor who personifies positivity and determined spirit. In 1998, Patti Stewart and her family lived in a charming two-story home at the end of Alamo Heights Boulevard adjacent to the baseball fields.
On the morning of Saturday, Oct. 17, 1998, extremely heavy rains pummeled the city. Waters began to creep up Alamo Heights Bouevard as Olmos Dam held back floodwaters that filled the basin. “We were in complete disbelief that water would ever come into the house,” Patti says.
As the water rose, covering the front lawn and seeping under the front door, the family began to put chairs and other pieces of furniture on tables and credenzas, above the water line. They still did not believe that it would rise much higher.
“Someone came to the door and said that we had to evacuate,” Patti recalls. “We grabbed the dog and whatever we could find and left.”
The next day, the family could only get within two blocks of their home. The entire first floor was under water. “We could see part of the roof above the front porch and the upstairs windows,” Patti says. “We still had a cat and a bird upstairs.”
A neighbor offered them the use of a small boat. They paddled over to their home, docking on the roof of the front porch. Climbing in through the second floor windows, they rescued the family pets and began to look for a few articles of clothing and necessities that would be needed in the coming days.
A fire department search and rescue team approached the house by boat and ordered immediate evacuation of the property. They told the family that electrical wires submerged in the murky floodwaters could electrocute them. “They were not happy with us,” Patti says, “but we did save our animals.”
The flood of 2002 was a repeat of 1998. They were flooded again. “I think that it is time for FEMA to buy us out,” she remembers saying. Fortunately FEMA did, along with the City of Alamo Heights. Where her house once stood, the new home of Alamo Heights’ dog park is set to open.
As we sat in the sun-drenched Sorrento’s Ristorante & Pizza sharing a delicious lunch, our conversation drifted to the Stewart Center, where the restaurant is located. “In any of these floods, we have never had water in the Stewart Center,” Patti muses. “It seems to always bypass us and head straight for 50 50.”
Patti’s maternal grandfather, Col. Benjamin Franklin Chadwick, built the small shopping center at the corner of Broadway and Marcia Place in the 1940s. At that time it was called the Chadwick Center. Patti’s father, Dick Stewart, bought the center in 1965 from his father-in-law and renamed it the Stewart Center. A stockbroker with a seat on the Midwest Stock Exchange, Dick had offices on the second story of the center.
Graduating from the University of Texas at Austin in 1979, Patti came back to San Antonio and began working for her father in the brokerage firm. Dick sold the firm in the mid-‘80s, and Patti worked with her father in leasing and management of the property. “I miss the relationship that I had with my father and working with him,” Patti says.
A third generation of the Stewart family is about to enter the family business. Patti’s son, Stewart Korte, a 2013 graduate of TCU, is going to work in the management offices this summer. “He will be learning the business while he looks for other opportunities,” Patti says. Her daughter, Kaitlyn Korte, lives in the city and has a career in physical fitness training.
When not at the helm of the commercial venture, Patti’s passion turns to photography. Trips to Santa Fe allow her to capture the expansive land in photographs of timeless beauty.
Some of the most poignant portraits are of son Stewart, a defensive end who played football at Alamo Heights High School. Patti never missed a game, joined by her father. They sat in the handicap- accessible seats along the rail so that Dick, then in poor health, could watch his grandson on the field. Patti was always close to her dad on the bench with camera clicking off shot after shot of the team play.
It is a moment I vividly recall of Patti and Dick Stewart sharing time together in a community they both loved.
