Lila Perry Steinhoff Archives

February 8, 2026

Frozen Moments

Here are some of my photo layouts being exhibited at the Cape Girardeau County History Center in Jackson.

“Couples” became “Moments”

A few years ago, I created a file directory called “Couples” where I parked images suitable for a Valentine’s Day post. Over time, I added more and more pictures and layouts, which caused a change in working titles.

I look at these as Frozen Moments.

Settling down

When I started school, Dad and Mother decided we’d stop living out of a house trailer Dad would pull from job site to job site (including a folding white picket fence that he built to make our rolling home look more homey).

Our first fixed home was a rental house on a hill at 2531 Bloomfield Road in Cape. When I was about kindergarten age, I looked out my bedroom window in the middle of the night and realized, with some distress, that I would never see the passing lights of those cars and trucks again.

A machine to freeze time

While most kids wanted machines that would let them skip forward or backward, I wanted one that would freeze time.

Hold onto that thought.

That’s what caused me to become a photographer. I carried a magic machine that would record, forever, what my eye was seeing, and I carried a press ID that gave me a license to be nosy.

These teenagers will never grow gray, old and infirm in my photos.

Old men endlessly playing checkers

These checker players in Matthews, Mo., are typical of the old men who would while away time whittling and playing checkers on park benches and in town squares.

When the weather turned cold, the old men would gather around the big stove in the back of my grandfather’s liquor store in Advance. They had the disgusting practice of blowing their noses, then hanging their “snot rags” on the side of the stove to dry out.

I collected old geezers

Even as a pre-teen, I logged many hours sitting on porches and treasuring the stories told about taming Swampeast Missouri.

I often wondered if they were pulling my leg when they talked about having to nail boards to the hooves of oxen to keep them from sinking into the muck.

True or legend? The story of a farmer who was proud of his new Caterpillar tractor until it broke down late one afternoon sounded too good to be true.

It was starting to get dark, so he decided to put off working on it until daylight. When he got to the field the next morning, the only thing visible of his tractor was the exhaust pipe sticking up out of the soft soil.

I’ve heard those stories from multiple sources, so they must be true.

Here’s the backstory on the two friends who lived in Athens County, Ohio.

It dawned on me that I went from recording old geezers to becoming one, and if I don’t share my photos and stories, they’ll be as dead as the Robinson Road boys.

The Athens Messenger Picture Page

Publisher Kenner Bush, a relatively young man who had to step in as publisher when his father died, loved photography and mostly tolerated us photographers. He gave us a 9×17-inch hole five days a week to fill.

We had to find the subjects, shoot the photos, do the layouts and write the copy. The pressure of having to fill that space made us find photos of daily life that normally would never make the paper.

Nellie Vess and desperation

The empty space was a blessing and a curse. I covered the Pomeroy Frog Jumping Contest in 1968 and, after doing a layout, had one picture of a frog in a jar that I stuck up on what we called the Wall of Desperation – the place where we would try to cobble together a layout when all else failed.

With the 10 a.m. deadline approaching, I filled the whole space with a single photo of the frog, accompanied with the worst pun-filled copy imaginable. If you don’t believe me, go here.

On another dry day, I must have driven a hundred miles up and down the hills and back roads with nothing clicking.

Then, with the shadows getting longer and the day fading fast, I turned down a gravel road and saw this pert little old lady, Nellie Vess, sitting on her porch holding Patty Sue. She became one of my favorite subjects.

Don’t you just love heart-warming stories with happy endings? It’s too bad that too many don’t turn out that way.

A few months after the story ran, my travels took me back down that gravel road near Trimble. Mrs. Vess was sitting by herself on the porch. There was no Patty Sue. There were no neighbor kids. Mrs. Vess told me that she had to go into the hospital for a brief stay and she had to give Patty Sue away. She was lonely again.

I’d like to tell you that I stopped by to see Mrs. Vess to keep her company from time to time, but I’d be fibbing. I never saw her again. I was just starting to learn that getting emotionally involved with everyone I photographed would soon empty my empathy pot and lead to burnout or worse. I could empathize with my subjects long enough to capture their souls, but then I had to cut them loose.

I turned down her offer of a cold glass of water on the last visit. And, I didn’t look in the rearview mirror when I drove away down that dusty gravel road.

It’s all about the money

I learned a valuable lesson in my early days freelancing for The Missourian for $5 a published photo. If I shot a picture that incorporated all of the elements in one frame, I made $5. If I shot it as a layout with multiple pictures, I’d make $10 or $25.

Reminds me of the tale of the crime writer who was chided by a friend because his characters were lousy shots – “Nobody ever gets shot with one bullet. It’s always ‘BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG.'”

“It’s because I get paid a nickel a word. I’m not about to leave two bits in the gun,” he explained.

Readers love pix of kids and animals

I ran into one of my formers staffers one day who had been a prolific feature wild art photographer. We talked about some of his work, and he said that times have changed.

“If I take pictures of kids in the wild, if won’t be long before somebody calls the cops to report a suspicious person. When I approach kids to get their names, they are as likely as not to scream “Stranger Danger” and run off down the street. It’s not worth the hassle these days.”

Small town teen hangouts

Every town had its hangouts – in Cape it was Wimpy’s, Pfisters and A&W. In Letart Falls, in SE Ohio, it was Carrol Grimm’s service station.

Telephones I have known

We didn’t have phones in our dorm rooms when I first moved into Scott Quad my junior year. If we wanted to call home, we had to find a phone booth that worked, a real challenge because the phone company wasn’t diligent about emptying the money out of them. When they were full, they were full.

Like Buddy Jim Stone points out, we didn’t have helicopter parents back in those days because we weren’t connected 24/7. By the time you were able to call home, you had probably already worked out the problem yourself (or had forgotten it).

When I arrived at Ohio University, I was in for a shock. The school taught photography as a fine art, not journalism. Not only that, they were big on studio lighting and formal portraits.

The bottom picture of Bob Rogers in a phone booth is an example of how I bent the class assignments to fit my vision.

In a strange twist of fate, I spent the last 13 years of my 35 at The Palm Beach Post as telecommunications manager, a job I really liked.

Who needs a cell phone?

I stopped by to see my erstwhile boss, Bob Rogers, and while chatting, I saw his neighbor kids working out an effective, low-tech communication solution.

I identify with the third wheel

Random photos from the 1970 Athens County Fair.

My Palm Beach Post help desk person was all excited about going to the South Florida Fair.

When she asked if I was going, I said, “I covered about 13 different county, regional and local fairs when I worked for The Athens Messenger. Many of those events used the same company for rides and attractions, so finding new angles was tough. I’m happy to never go to a fair again.”

Tent revivals and protest marches

They were said to be the best place for hookups. I like the evolution of this couple at a student rights march in 1969.

Serious snuggling

This couple had almost the whole stadium to themselves on this cold, snowy afternoon at Ohio University.

OU Football and the Capaha Park Pool

I was obligated to shoot sports action, but I really enjoyed turning the camera on people in the stands. The pictures rarely ran, but you can see them now.

The middle photos shows kids supposedly studying for a lifesaving test at the Capaha Park Pool, but it looks like the teens are studying each other more than their workbooks.

Tearing down the goalposts

Ohio University was the only place where I photographed students tearing down their own goal posts.

The “hippy chick” at the top ran for homecoming queen as a lark. I don’t know how many votes she got, but I loved her spirit.

Miss Miller’s Wedding Day

Wife Lila worked as a teller at banks in Ohio, North Carolina and Florida. One of her favorite customers in Athens was Miss Miller, a diminutive woman of uncertain age, who would show up to withdraw tiny sums of money.

One day, she announced that she was getting married. Lila and I attended the ceremony, and The Messenger did a story about the couple.

A few days after the wedding, I stopped by the old two-story frame house the man owned. I had almost stepped up onto the porch when I heard a “THUD, THUD, THUD” and I had to dodge a big tire rolling out into the yard.

Miss Miller was cleaning house.

MLK National Day of Mourning

One of my most productive days as a news photographer was covering the Martin Luther King National Day of Mourning at Ohio University. It was a solemn gathering that culminated with hundreds of students conducting a sit-in at Court and Union, the main drag. Here is a more complete account of that day, including a video a man did incorporating my images.

A hot-headed police captain didn’t realize this wasn’t your normal rites of spring event when he started to throw a student off “his” street, uttering racial epithets at the time. Emotions were raw, and if cooler heads hadn’t stepped in it could have turned into a disaster.

While I was standing in the middle of the street, I came to the realization that I was fortunate enough to be part of something historical, but as an observer and recorder rather than a participant.

That was brought home to me when I met a school bus taking a bunch of students to jail after a different demonstration. Kathy, a young woman I had covered and admired because she was the real deal – someone who believed in her causes and worked with poor kids in the dying coal towns of Appalachia, stepped off the bus.

“Kathy, are you OK?” I asked. “Is there anybody you’d like for me to call?”

She gave me a withering glare and said, “Ken, one of these days you’re going to have to lay down that damned camera and take a stand.”

She was wrong.

Your whole world shrinks

I was sitting in The Missourian office on a slow Saturday when I heard police traffic on the radio that sounded unusual. When I checked it out, I found that Phillip Odell Clark had killed his ex-grandmother-in-law and taken family members and others hostage. When a 10-year-old paperboy showed up to collect, he was added to the hostages.

After an hour or so, I heard glass break and Clark growled, “I’m a comin’ out.” He emerged with a gun at the boy’s head and a bottle of whiskey in the other hand.

I was asked many times what I was thinking, and I usually gave a flip answer “I thought I was going to see a boy get his brains blown out.”

Years later, I met LaFern Stiver, friend Shari’s mother, who quizzed me repeatedly about the experience since the murdered woman was her aunt.

One day, I thought I owed her the real answer: “I was running through a mental checklist. Am I on the first three frames or the last three? Am I exposing for the shadows or the highlights? Will my shutter speed be fast enough to capture the moment if the worst happens? Photographers have to, literally stay focused no matter what is in front of them. Your whole world shrinks down to a tiny square.”

To serve and protect

I was captain on the Trinity Lutheran School Safety Patrol, so I’ve always had a soft spot for those boys (and later, girls) who kept their classmates safe crossing the street.

In This Huge Silence

I had Gordon Parks’ poem on my office wall for years. It has always moved me to the point that I can’t read it aloud without getting a fishbone in my throat.

I introduced SE Ohio curator (now director) Jessica to the poem when we visited Kaskaskia Island. She was equally moved by the powerful words.

Locks of Love

Speaking of Jessica, we found these locks of love on a bridge in Marietta, Ohio.

Ordinary people doing ordinary things

If you’ve been around me much at all, you’ve probably heard me quote Chicago columnist Bob Greene, who said his job as a journalist boiled down to getting someone to love him for 28 minutes while he stole their soul.

I like to think with age comes maturity, so I tell folks that I didn’t steal the souls, I only borrowed them, and now I’m trusting you to to carry them with you.

I covered presidents, wannabe presidents, the Pope and the Queen of England, but my greatest pleasure was shooting photos of ordinary people doing ordinary things. I wanted to find people whose names would appear in the paper only when they were born, died, got married or got a speeding ticket.

Mom of the Hilltop was one of those subjects that caused me to realize that I had the ability to make one of those ordinary people Queen for the Day.

Coffee can film

Since I was a freelancer in Cape, I had a darkroom set up in the basement. When I was through processing and printing the money shots, I’d take the random frames I shot to burn up film and put them in a plastic garbage can under my desk. The family knew not to put anything in it.

After I had been gone about ten years, I saw the scraps of film were still there, unmolested (unlike my comic book collection destroyed by my destructive younger brothers). I rolled up the film, wrapped rubber bands around it, and stuffed it in coffee cans, not to be looked at until after I retired in 2008.

It turned out that many of those “useless” pictures turned out to be more precious than the ones I had been paid to take.

An assignment to shoot a cleanup campaign in Smelterville turned out to be in that group. Since I only needed a few pictures for the paper, I spent a couple hours roaming around shooting people and places that were never published.

After I digitized the film, I wondered if I could track down my subjects. Smelterville had been flooded in 1973 and 1993, and the area, like Red Star at the north end of Cape had been bought out.

After many false starts, I finally ran across a man who not only could identify most of the people, he could tell me the names of their dogs and what was the matter with the cars scattered around.

I started interviewing folks and turned the project into a book. You can read details here.

I won the lottery

Buddy Jim Stone had an on-and-off girlfriend named Carol whose mother owned the Rialto theater in Cape. Jim loved making popcorn, and I was fascinated by watching the projectionist swapping reels of film in the projection booth. We spent a fair amount of time there.

When we pulled up to the place one night, we noticed a new cashier in the ticket booth. We flipped a coin to see who would hit on the new gal.

I won the flip. It was one of only two winning lotteries in my life. The second was when my birthday came up as Number 258 in the draft lottery, and I was spared an all-expense-paid vacation in SE Asia.

Future Wife Lila and Carol were friends, so when I found out that Jim wasn’t going to ask Carol to the senior prom, I asked Lila if she would mind if I asked Carol, also a senior, to go so she wouldn’t miss out on the event.

Being fairly clueless, I didn’t recognize the significance of what I was asking – it was a big deal for a junior girl to be invited by a senior to his prom. To her credit, she understood what I was doing and immediately gave her consent.

And, that was who she was. Someone who would over look my many faults and foibles.

Cute then, cute now

On one of our first dates, I pulled out my ever-present camera and started to take her picture. She let me know that wasn’t on the list of acceptable behaviors.

When she let me take the photo of her with a paintbrush and curlers in her hair – and live – I thought there may be some hope for me.

I swear that my Wife Wife, Bike Wife and Office Wife must have coordinated that eye-roll look of amusement when dealing with me. I couldn’t have been luckier.

Gallery of layouts

Here’s a gallery of all the layouts in one place. Click on any image to make it larger, then use your arrow keys to move around. I hope you’ve enjoyed my time machine.

December 6, 2025

Shredding – My Guilty Pleasure

It doesn’t take much to amuse me. I bought a shredder to take care of confidential financial documents plus the occasional credit card and even CD.

I realized that it didn’t really get much use in the basement, so I moved it under the kitchen table where I take a guilty pleasure watching junk mail disappear into its maw, leaving nothing but tiny strips of paper.

Wife Lila the bank teller

Wife Lila took a job as teller at the Hocking Valley bank when we were living in Athens, Ohio. She turned out to be good at it and enjoyed helping her customers.

Miss Miller was one of her favorites – a tiny little woman who would show up to withdraw a buck or two at a time. She came in all excited to say that she was getting married. Her tip turned into a nice picture package in The Athens Messenger. (Click on the image to make it larger.)

When I went out to visit the newlyweds, I paused on the porch of a battered two-story frame house that had clearly seen better days when I heard a loud THUMP, THUMP THUMP, BANG, and an old tire went rolling out the front door.

Miss Miller was cleaning house.

Getting back to shredders

One nice thing about being a bank teller is that it was never hard for her to find a new job. When we moved to Gastonia, N.C., she hired on at the Carolina State Bank just as it was moving into new facilities.

Spencer, one of her bosses, was a nice guy, but it was good that the bank was housed in a one-story building because I’m not sure his elevator would reach a higher floor.

Right after a huge shredder was uncrated, Spence said, “Let’s see if this thing works.” while plugging it into the wall outlet.

It worked. Unfortunately, the first thing it ate was the instruction manual that had been sitting in the tray.

Lila the Head Teller

Once it became clear that Lila was the one other tellers turned to when they were out of balance, she was promoted to head teller at the Flagship Bank next to the paper. (The bank has since changed its name six or eight times, and the building is buried under The Post’s four-story building.)

She particularly liked working in the drive-in windows. She was probably holding the drawer open for me to insert two forms of ID before cashing my check.

She didn’t play favorites, although she said there was a particular bald-headed fireman who would get her weak in the knees.

That might have been about the time I ditched the combover and went fully chrome on top.

October 1, 2025

Cape Comfort Food

When I started spending most of my time in Cape , Wife Lila was sure I would starve to death and perish in my own filth. The latter is still a possibility, but I’ve turned into a passable cook.

I saw a picture the other day of something that reminded me of one of our frequent family meals – something Mother dubbed Hungarian Goulash. I’m not sure where she got the Hungarian part – maybe she was thinking of Hungry Goulash.

Anyway, I looked up several recipes, extracted the common elements, and started creating my own version.

This contains two pounds of ground beef, five strips of bacon cut one-inch long, onions, peppers, and garlic, all prepared on my Blackstone griddle. When the meat and veggies were ready, I moved them into my 6-quart Instant Pot because that was a convenient place for everything to come together.

I added beef broth, water, two cans of tomato sauce, two cans of Rotel diced tomatoes and green chilies (instead of just plain diced tomatoes), a bunch of seasonings that just happened to be in front of me, and three bay leaves (what they do, I’m never sure).

I’m a memory cooker – meaning that I remember having something extra on the shelf that needs to be used up. That caused me to add a package of frozen corn.

Once everything was well-mixed, I let it bubble for about 25 minutes.

The next step was to throw in a box of elbow macaroni. I thought that stuff was sort of small (it eventually expanded), so I remembered I had a box of Zatarain’s black beans and rice sitting on a shelf.

After that was well combined, I added a whole bunch of cheddar cheese (abut three times as much as the recipe called for), then about the same amount of Mozzarella cheese.

You can never have too much garlic, onions, bacon and cheese, after all.

About 25 minutes later, the cheeses had melted together nicely, and the noodles had expanded. I was ready to see how my 6-quart experiment in culinary time travel went.

It turned out well enough that I wasn’t ashamed to farm out most of the pot to friends and family in town.

April 4, 2025April 13, 2025

Sharon Brooks Stiver – 1948 – 2025

I’ve written hundreds of obituaries over the years, most of them at The Southeast Missourian when I was fresh out of high school. I can’t improve on this note from Shari’s niece, Tara Cissell Marvin:

Shari Stiver, a fiercely independent and brilliantly overeducated soul, passed away on February 11th, at the age of 77. Shari possessed an insatiable curiosity, a sharp mind, and a green thumb that could coax life from even the most stubborn soil.

Known for a wit as dry as the prairie wind and a temperament best described as “selectively social,” Shari preferred the quiet company of cats, books, plants, and perhaps a handful of tolerable humans. Those who managed to earn a place in Shari’s world knew a person of deep thought, unwavering principles, and a begrudging but genuine loyalty.

Though not one for grand gestures or idle chit-chat, Shari found solace in the rhythm of the garden, the pursuit of knowledge, and the quiet company of her beloved cats. In true fashion, Shari leaves behind a meticulously cultivated garden, an extensive library, her furry friends, and a legacy of quiet resilience.

Sage advice from Editor John Blue

As the “kid” in the newsroom, I got a lot of the routine assignments, particularly obits. In the days before the internet, email and even fax machines, almost all obits were taken over the phone. If someone held up the phone, grinned, and hollered, “It’s for you,” it had to be a call from our Charleston stringer. She was old enough to have been there for the signing of the Declaration of Independence, was deaf as a stump, and had badly-fitting false teeth that made her dictation full of clicks and garbles.

Editor John Blue must have noticed my frustration, so he called me aside and said, “The obituary is one of the most important stories you’ll ever write. It’s likely to be the last time the person’s name is in print. Every word will be analyzed and scrutinized by those who knew him or or for their entire life. It’s going to be mailed to friends and relatives all over the world, and it’ll be pressed between the pages of family Bibles.”

Unspoken was, “Don’t blow it off, and don’t screw it up.”

Mr. Blue also made it a point of emphasizing that our job was to report the news, not be a part of it. I’m going to bend his rule a bit to share some of my memories of the classmate who was my first girlfriend, first kiss and first disastrous (to me, at least) breakup.

A little history

Sharon Lee Stiver was born April 4, 1948, in San Diego, Ca., the daughter of Capt. and Mrs. Charles Ellwood Stiver. Mr. Stiver was a navy aviator. Shari attended schools in Cape Girardeau, graduating 4th in the Central High School Class of 1965. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan, and her PhD from Washington University in St. Louis.

Shari was a child psychologist for 13 years working in the juvenile justice and substance abuse areas. After that, she became a contractor specializing in building restoration. (More about that later).

Shari and Dad tried to save me from Algebra

I was an OK enough student to make National Honor Society, but Shari ranked 4th in our class and was in the top 10%. I was one of the 90% that the top 10% stood atop.

Here she is in my basement office trying to explain that, yes, you CAN multiply letters. I sort of understood the concepts, I just wasn’t a big fan of homework.

I also took alternative ways of interpreting the problems.

Cringe-worthy notes

When you spend K-8 in a Lutheran parochial school with the same two dozen kids, your social skills are somewhat challenged. I mean, the girls in your class might as well have been sisters.

High school was a brave and scary new world. I have some cringe-worthy notes from Shari’s friends trying to match us up. Even more embarrassing are letters she wrote to friends describing our early dating rituals.

She and I could never figure out who sent this photo to me. It wasn’t her, because her name was spelled wrong. She’s wearing a Job’s Daughters Bethel 51 tag, so it must have been someone at camp with her.

We connected while working together doing political polling our freshman summer. I finally got up enough nerve to ask her to go to the Rialto for a movie, then she asked me to a dance.

I explained to her that I didn’t know how to dance, and demonstrated that, something that insured it never happened again.

One smart cookie

I was picking stuff up off the floor from “Shari’s room” so I could send my Roomba off in search of errant dust bunnies when I ran across a brown shopping bag that she had left under a chair. I remembered looking inside and seeing that it held a scrapbook with lots of newspaper clippings in it, but I didn’t spend any time on it.

I finally gave it a good perusal and saw that it had the results of her 7th grade Iowa Test of Basic Skills. Not surprisingly, she was in the high 90 percentiles in almost every category.

Even her lowest category – spelling – was 81%. What I found interesting was that she scored a “mere” 95% in Arithmetic Concepts. Maybe that’s why my algebra scores were mediocre since I counted on her to tutor me.

Detailed answer and precise handwriting

I’m not exactly sure what she was hoping to discover, but I like her summary: (“The answer is not completely exact. It’s about as far off as the inaccuracy in measuring the radius (the cow’s mouth will be more than 75′ from the building even if his neck isn’t!”)

The only nit I will pick is her reference to “his neck.” We had a pasture behind the house where the Hale cows grazed. Cows were females, and bulls were males, so she appears to have made a gender error in her qualifier.

She scored lots of ink

Here’s a gallery of some of the news stories that were in the scrapbook. Most came from The Southeast Missourian or the Tiger, the high school paper.

Click on any image to make it larger, then use the arrow keys to scroll through the gallery.

It ain’t gonna happen

When I asked Shari’s friends and relatives to help me understand who she was, I paraphrased Winston Churchill’s description of Russia, “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”

Several said, “You should have known her better than anyone. You go back so far.”

I explained that we were in a common orbit of debate and classes our freshman year, but only dated from our freshman summer to New Year’s Eve of that year, then didn’t speak until Jim Stone and I reconnected with her in 2010.

We DID have one strange date after our breakup. I asked if she’d like to ride out to Old McKendree Chapel on a rented bicycle built for two for a picnic. How I came up with that idea, I don’t know. I had logged lots of bike miles on my hilly paper route, but I don’t recall her ever mention two-wheel experience.

I don’t remember any details of our ride. I know it had to have involved hills and several stretches of gravel road.

We made it to the chapel grounds successfully and spread out our picnic lunch. We hadn’t been there long when the church caretaker ambled up and said, disapprovingly, “This is sacred church ground, any public display of affections would be inappropriate.”

Shari looked me in the eye, then turned to the caretaker and said, deliberately, “Don’t worry, that ain’t gonna happen.”

That brings to mind a special edition The Palm Beach Post did on Cuban and Haitian refugees: “Crests of Hope, Troughs of Despair.”

Shari and drama

Shari was active in Central’s Red Dagger and Silver Spear. Here is a gallery of her in Our Hearts were Young and Gay. You can see the whole cast in this blog post.

Memories from Mary Jo Stiver

Mary Jo was Shari’s brother Skip’s ex, and Charles E. Stiver III (Woody) was her nephew. This photo was taken at Woody’s high school graduation.

Mary Jo: It’s occurred to me that in the 35 years I’ve known her, I only spent little snippets of time with her over holidays and short visits. I tried to entice her on some travels with me, but she was mostly a “homebody” person.

When I would go to visit her at her home, she would make me a tea and, of course, she would always have her Starbucks handy — her favorite! We would tour around her home to see her latest renovations and acquisitions – and visit with her children, the kitty cats. And of course, she would regale me with stories of her and Skip’s childhood — and lots of STIVER family history.

My dear sister-in-law will be sorely missed. To my children, and all her nieces and nephews, she was “Tanta” – the “fun” aunt! She was fiercely independent, kooky at times – and always interesting, controversial or not. One of the most intelligent women I ever met. As you know, she loved gardening and antiques, thanks to her beloved grandmother, Meme (pronounced Mimi.) – and her aunts, Ouida and Great-grandmother Bookie. I loved all the stories!

I wasn’t around for her years as a psychologist – however, I saw the beautiful work she did as a historic renovation specialist. That was her passion.

She and I loved each other from the first time we met – Did you know we shared the same birthday? That made us feel like real sisters! We always called each other, “sis.” I wish we lived closer to have had more time together. I’ll miss her terribly!

Barb Goza Chemers

I met Shari in high school, as a new member of Jobs Daughters when she was the Honored Queen. She had risen to the top of that organization as she did with so many of the organizations she joined. Her energy, intellect, creativity, practical problem-solving, and straight-forward communication were of use in all her endeavors – from school to psychological treatment of troubled adolescents to reconstruction of troubled houses.

These propensities also made Shari a stand-out friend for me. She introduced me to ways of thinking and organizing that I hadn’t before seen in operation. Her powers of observation, memory for what she observed, and willingness to share her observations facilitated my developing adulthood. As adults, we’d go for long periods of time without seeing each other, and upon reconnection, simply pick up the thread of the conversation. So now, although I miss Shari’s presence on this earth, I am still able to have lively conversations with her in my mind. And I am able to see many of Shari’s faces.

• The Jobs Daughters Honored Queen beatifically glowing as young women marched in white satin Greek goddess robes
• The high school senior mischievously smiling as we surreptitiously skinny dipped in a Cape Girardeau pool at dawn

[Editor’s note: despite many accounts of teenage skinny dipping recorded on my blog, I was never invited to dip my skinny with any of the miscreants.]

• The graduate student chewing her pencil while puzzling where to place the next index card on the wall of cards organizing concepts of her dissertation
• The frustrated pout of the patient, so distressed that treatment for her cancer had so many negative side effects
• The satisfied grin of the gardener, proudly standing among her crops

All these faces, and more. Shari graced us with much to learn from and much to remember.

Ronna Orentas

When Shari was in the hospital, I asked who she would like contacted. She said, “hairdresser.” I don’t have a photo of Ronna, but I found a clipping from a magazine that was probably a hairdo Shari wanted to copy.

Ronna: I remember her when we met at the Lindell Club, always in painters’ white pants. Had no clue she was a Dr hahaha. Spent many hours talking and getting to know each other over the almost 40 yrs of sobriety. She was independent, stubborn, extremely intelligent and talented and I loved her for who she was!!! We got sober together and grew old together and I’ll miss her!!!!

Jim Stone

Jim: She was a unique personality indeed. Although we reconnected a bit recently, most memories are from high school days. Shari was a very smart player in our lives and those of many others over the years. She left her mark wherever she was and on whatever she did. I already miss her.

Here’s an account of our eventual reunion in 2010.

Linda Goldstein

Shari Stiver’s BFF Linda in 3 Kings 11-08-2012

I bought tickets for a James McMurtry concert in St. Louis. I invited Brother Mark and Robin, Shari and Mother to come along. Mother bailed, so Shari asked if she could sub in BFF Linda. Here’s Linda when we went out for a bite to eat.

Linda had been Shari’s roommate in college, business partner and was named the executor of her estate.

Linda: Her grandmother instilled in her a reverence for family, and, consequently, it’s about the family not not necessarily the individuals. It’s the concept of family.

When I stopped seeing her, I missed her a lot. We did all that estate selling, we did projects – she was my “I’m working on this and I can’t make it work call.”

She was that DIY person, and I still miss it.

Well, it’s going to take a long time to unravel who she was. or whether we’ll ever be able to. And she was somebody different for each of us. Yeah. You know, she was somebody different at different times of my life for me. You know?

My mother adored Shari. Well, I don’t know if she adored her. But Shari was very kind to her. Shari would take Weezer (her cat) to the nursing home. And Weezer would sit on my mother’s lap, and Shari would push her around in her wheelchair. And everybody in the place was just like, “Oh.”

Sally Wright Owen

Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater campaigns in Cairo, Ill., 10/02/1964

Jim Stone, Shari and Sally Wright covered Barry Goldwater in Cairo in 1964.

‘We had our own press passes and sat in the very front of the press box, and they even fed us,’ said Sally Wright, 12B.

“‘And we saw every detail,’ added Shari Stiver, 12B.”

Sally: Shari often found refuge at her grandmother Mimi’s house, conveniently located next door. This was the scene of the Razor Gone Rogue debacle.

Must have been either freshman or sophomore year of high school. We decided to shave our legs before some sort of school function. There is a technique for shaving your legs. We did not consider that. What could go wrong?

Let me count the ways. Many nicks and bloody notches later we realized that you DO NOT shave legs without soap or shaving cream. Our injuries were beyond little scraps of toilet paper plastered on the offending areas. This was an all-out Band-Aid (full box) emergency. Lesson learned: It’s ugly being beautiful.

Thawing out in Florida

When the frost was on the pumpkins back in the Midwest, Shari was eager to visit Wife Lila in Florida so she could thaw out, swim, go to the beach, play with flowers and see the sights.

She’d fly down, then I’d give her a ride back to Missouri.

Here’s a gallery of her frolics.

De facto Niece Catlin

Caitlin McCann – Shari Stiver’s de facto niece 3-10-2025

Shari’s laptop was a treasure trove of photos of Catlin McCann, many of which were of a young woman she describes in legal documents as her “emotional/de facto niece.” I met her when she came to St. Louis a few weeks ago. I can understand why Shari loved her so much – she was smart, funny, and had strong emotional attachments to her de facto aunt.

I told her that Shari’s laptop tracked her through her pre-teen, braces and acne years, though high school and college and points in between.

Here are some highlights of what she recalled.

Caitlin: I’ve known Shari since I would have been five or six. It’s been a long time. You know, she bought me my first tool set, the first of which was non-operable.

It was for kids, but because Mom and Shari were doing repairs around the house and I wanted to help, she got me a fake tool set so that I could help, but not actually mess anything.

Costumes

She made me Halloween costumes for several years. There’s a bunch of pictures of those which I remember thinking was great fun. I remember laying. on the floor and the draft paper and her just urging me to sit still if I really wanted this to work.

One Halloween I got it into my head that I wanted – for whatever reason- to be a hot pink angel. I don’t know what I thought I meant by that, but it was very pink, and Shari said, “Okay, kiddo,” and made the dress and the wings and the whole thing.

[Caitlin wasn’t the only one she made costumes for. Here are some examples.]

Shari made dorm room look like adults lived there

When I went off to college she had me measure my first dorm room, and then she sent me an AutoCAD floor plan.

She spray painted cement blocks and two by fours, and made like a little entertainment system. My roommate and I lived there all four four years and just loved her. I’m telling you our our apartment is the only one that looked like adults lived in it. Everybody else was chaos. We made a home and it was because Shari organized everything.

Birthdays aren’t real

When I was really young, she told me, “You know, that my birthdays weren’t real, and that they didn’t all need to be celebrated, so please stop asking what her birthday was and what age she was, so I remember figuring it out once and actually like calling her and doing something nice for her her 60th, and she told me, ‘ I love you, don’t ever do this again.'”

Cornerstone of my life

She’s just been basically a cornerstone of my life. She was my safe space for whatever I was going on with in the world or figuring stuff out and she she was always really good about telling me that that was normal and it didn’t make me weird to be going through whatever I was going through at the time.

I’m gonna miss the random text messages and the care packages because she was one of the first people in my life who made it really clear that it was okay that we were in constant contact.

For a long time I didn’t know that was normal, that that was okay and she made that not just okay, but healthy, because I never doubted that she cared and I don’t think she ever doubted that I cared.

She had she had opinions and I didn’t always agree with her opinions, but I think we had a a good system of just letting each other air those opinions and if we didn’t agree that was fine She was very patient with me,

She let me yammer on about boys when I was a teenager. She didn’t like most of them, and she was right in the long run. But she let me talk it all out

You need to collect something

She sat me down when I was about 8 or 9 years old and she said, “Look, kid, you’re getting real hard to shop for. I need you to pick something to collect so that I can know where I’m going with you.”

Initially, we tried cats and that didn’t quite stick in the same way it did with hers. We ended up with rubber ducks, which is why there are two rubber ducks in the bathroom.

Katie Bug and Greasshopper

She approved of my husband. She loved him. She really did.

I was really nervous to introduce them because I thought, “Oh, God, if Shari doesn’t like him, I’m f’ked. Kiss of death. Yeah. Well, and because her opinion meant so much to me, but no, she really took to him.”

When I was a little one, she called me Katie Bug, and so she has given me a lot of things with little ladybugs over the years

I knew he had arrived, because she texted me after we’d had lunch and grilled him. She texted me after and said, “I think I like him. I think you can keep him. I’m going to call him Grasshopper.”

And so, anytime she would call or check in with me, it was, “How are you and Grasshopper?” I mean, it was just… I love it. And I just, I know, I always loved it. I just thought, what better stamp of approval from her?

David Hoyt Servis – Sharon Lee Stiver

Shari’s scrapbook held a number of surprises, including The Missourian account of her wedding to David Hoyt Servis in 1969.

LaFern, Shari’s mother, offered this account of the wedding. I offer it up only because it becomes germane with some other things found in the scrapbook.

LaFern: The day before the wedding we were in the laundry room. Her bridesmaids were already here, and I was doing laundry, and she was sitting there by the washing machine. I was getting the clothes out of the dryer. And she casually made the remark, “You know, I don’t think I would be getting married if I weren’t. afraid to be alone.”

And I said, “What?”

And she says, “No kidding, mom, I don’t think I would be getting married if I wasn’t scared to death to be alone.”

Records show that Shari and David married on June 10, 1969 and divorced June 26, 1971.

Afraid of being alone

I wouldn’t have included this account had I not run into some poems Shari wrote that echoed that fear of being alone.

Rodger (Rick) Meinz

This photo of John Mueller, Rick Meinz and me dressed up for a Trinity Lutheran Church pageant of some kind demonstrates that it doesn’t take six degrees of separation to link up people in Cape Girardeau.

All three of us dated Shari, and Rick ended up marrying her.

Rick (I’ll call him that because that’s how I remember him from high school) days, had some interesting perspectives on our mutual girlfriend. He was drafted and joined the navy ” to avoid jungle duty in Vietnam,” but chafed at military life. He left with an honorable discharge, but both he and the navy were happy to see each other go.

I’d like to get married

Rick: Shari said, “You’re getting out of the navy, so why don’t you come stay with me?”

Four or so months later, she said, “I’d like to get married.”

“Whoa! You REALLY want to get married? WHY do you want to get married?”

“Well, for the experience of it. I’m in women’s studies, and I want the experience of it. And, I want to get my name back.”

So, they went before a liberal judge in Houston who was willing to let Sharon go back to Stiver, and, at the same time, change her middle name from Lee to Brooks, in honor of the Brooks side of her family.

Records show that Rick and Shari were married May 3, 1972 and split in June 26, 1974, although he said they had been separated long before that.

The Brooks -Shari connection

I knew a little about Major James Francis Brooks from when he was told by Louis Houck to “advance” down to where he could buy property for $10 per acre instead of $35 for a railroad depot. That “advance” was how Mother’s hometown – Advance – got its name.

Where did the first call terminate?

We were walking around on Main Street when she said she’d like to take a look at a plaque on the building at the corner of Main and Themis.

The Rotary Club plaque read, “Telephone Service. In 1877 the first long distance telephone line in Missouri was completed December 18, 1877, between Cape Girardeau and Jackson. In 1896 here in a 10′ x 12′ second floor room the city’s first telephone exchange was established by A.R. Ponder, L.J. Albert, J.F. Brooks and M.A. Dennison doing business as the Cape Girardeau Telephone Company.”

It rang in my great-grandfather’s kitchen

“The call may have originated in Cape,” she said, “but do you have any idea where it terminated in Jackson?”

Somehow or another, knowing Shari, I was pretty sure I was going to find out.

“The first call rang in my great-grandfather’s kitchen,” she elaborated. “He was the J.F. Brooks mentioned on the plaque. He was the engineer who laid out the railroad for Louis Houck. Houck wanted to be able to get hold of him, so he had him pull a phone line between Cape and Jackson.”

Shari added that her great-grandmother, “Bookie” (Florence Adele Turnbaugh Brooks) played telephone operator after the initial excitement of the first couple of calls died down. Maj. Brooks got his engineering degree at Vineyard College in Kansas City after he rode his spotted pony west with a wagon train to get there.

The Turnbaughs were Southerners who owned slaves, which Shari suspects caused some heated discussions over a bottle of whiskey on the front porch of the Turnbaugh house in Jackson.

Looking for Turnbaugh grave markers

Shari Stiver w Turnbaugh marker Jackson MO Cemetery

Shari wanted to find her Turnbaugh relatives while I was looking for other grave markers in the Jackson Cemetery.

Gladys (Mimi) Stiver

Shari Stiver at 406 Louisiana 02-12-2012

Shari and I probably spent as much time at her grandmother’s house at 406 Louisiana as anywhere. Since I was only 15 and didn’t have a driver’s license, my dad or her dad had to chauffeur us to and from date locations. We sat a respectable distance apart on those jaunts.

Mimi, as Shari called her, gave us some safe space on her back porch. She recognized that I was essentially harmless / clueless, so she would leave us alone and make sure clomped loudly if she was going to invade our spot.

I remember the white cats

I was always fascinated by two white china cats hanging from the shutters around the front door. When I visited the house years later, I was disappointed that the cats had vanished.

I was pleased to see that at least one of them had followed Shari to her back yard in Webster Groves.

I admired and respected Mrs. Stiver

She was a mover and shaker in the local Republican party, and I was a young Barry Goldwater aficionado, so we had some mutual interests. What impressed me was that, despite my age, she was never dismissive or condescending She was one of the first adults who didn’t treat me like a kid.

LaFern: Shari more or less worshipped her grandmother. Oh, yes, oh yes, she did, yeah. Because to Mimi, Shari never did anything wrong. She didn’t. She idolized that child. She really did. She just adored her. And it wasn’t false in any manner of means. It was just Mimi. Mimi had the ability to love and to love greatly. And Shari just soaked it in. She loved it very much.

I don’t know, I don’t know what her beginnings were like but I know that she really, really appreciated her grandmother’s love.

Gladys Stiver on Primary Election night

Gladys Stiver, Gary Rust and others at Jackson courthouse c Aug. 1964

Gary Rust, at the end of the table, recruited me to work at The Jackson Pioneer before he became a newspaper publishing magnate. Mrs. Stiver is on the left as the election results started coming into the courthouse.

Here’s what election night was like in the days before computers and the internet.

Shari will be united with her grandmother

Shari’s ashes will share her grandmother’s plot in the New Lorimier Cemetery’s Section 1, Lot 23, Grave 5., next to her dad’s grave.

Mom – LaFern Stiver

The best thing about reconnecting with Shari was meeting her mother, LaFern (who is also know as Mick to a lot of her friends).

As of this writing, LaFern is 96, sharp as a tack, and an endless source of stories about growing up in Oriole and teaching in one-room schools.

I go over to her house a couple times a week to drop off leftovers, attack computer problems and to fill the Mother void after my own died.

After LaFern and Shari’s dad got married, Shari handed her new mother a pearl ring and said, “Mom, I want you to have this.”

“I intended to pass it on to her after I died.”

She called me “mom” right away, and Skip did, too. I mean, their acceptance of me was just fantastic. It really was. It was almost like they were relieved I was in the family. And I thought it was so kind of Shari when she asked me to be her mother. I thought that was one of the greatest honors I’ve ever received in my life and. We had an adoption party, so she’s my daughter, she’s not my stepdaughter.

How she got into construction

[Editor’s note: this was Shari’s floor plan for a remodel of my kitchen. It, alas, has not yet been done.]

LaFern: The first time we visited her new home in St. Louis, she warned, “Watch out for the hole in the floor.” . Right there, I mean a hole, a gaping hole. And if you stepped in it, you went down to the basement. And then we went into the bedroom, and I’m not lying, you could look up and see the rafters. There was no ceiling in that room. And I said, “Shari, does it ever rain in? And she says, well not here, but right over there it does. And I thought, for crying out loud. And so that’s how she became a contractor.

As Shari put it, “After paying contractors $10,000 to repair the house and $25,000 to repair their damage,” she decided to oversee the job herself.

Soon, friends were asking if she’d take on their projects. It didn’t take long for her to decided to switch careers to somewhere she had a chance of actually fixing what was broken. She became a general contractor specializing in design-build rehab in St. Louis’ historic districts.

I remember her saying that she loved putting up walls a lot more than working in the court system because the walls would stay. And she said, with people, they say they’re going to, but they don’t. They just don’t change, and that was frustrating for her because when she got done with something, she wanted it done

Gallery of a mostly smiling LaFern

Shari on the road

I traveled all over the Southeast with a group of women I called my Road Warriorettes. Most of them were fellow newspaper people, bike partners or a museum curator. The one thing we all had in common was the rule that anyone in the car could holler, “STOP! Turn around” if something interesting was spotted.

When I hauled her ashes from St. Louis to Cape, I commented, “This will be the first trip where I won’t have to say, “Get your bleeping feet off the dash if you don’t want to wear your shinbones around your ears if the airbags deploy.”

A real friend

Broadway Theater – 805 Broadway 12-16-2010

I had been trying for years to get into the old Broadway theater. When I finally got permission, I realized that it would be REALLY helpful if I had someone along to help me light the place.

I called Shari in St. Louis. She tried to beg off, saying she had a cold. I did a pitiful lip quiver that must have transmitted over the phone, so she came down and bailed me out.

Random Shari photos

When Shari was in the hospital, I brought fruit and veggie platters in for the staff. I attached this so they could see a vital Shari instead of someone with all kinds of leads and lines hanging off her.

Shari hated to be photographed, and she insisted on final photo approval (which I usually didn’t seek). Here’s a gallery of photos over the years.

A plethora of blog posts mentioning Shari

Some last thoughts

You’d think that after nearly 6,000 words, I might have a clearer picture of Shari, but I’ve mostly ended with more questions than answers.

Almost every evening, I’d give her a call, mostly a health and welfare check, and, to be honest, I usually felt relief when I got her voice mail.

These lines from John Prines’s Hello in There rang true:

Me and Loretta, we don’t talk much moreShe sits and stares through the back door screenAnd all the news just repeats itselfLike some forgotten dreamThat we’ve both seen

Someday I’ll go and call up RudyWe worked together at the factoryBut what could I say if he asks, “What’s new?”“Nothin’, what’s with you?Nothin’ much to do”

You know that old trees just grow strongerAnd old rivers grow wilder every dayOld people just grow lonesomeWaiting for someone to say“Hello in there, hello”

Dangling Conversation

I had a hard time deciding whether John Prine’s verse or lines from Simon and Garfunkel’s Dangling Conversation were more appropriate. Electrons are cheap, so I’ll go with both.

Yes, we speak of things that matter
With words that must be said

And how the room is softly faded
And I only kiss your shadow, I cannot feel your hand
You’re a stranger now unto me
Lost in the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs
In the borders of our lives

Boy in the Rain

When I read this poem she wrote in the style of e.e. cummings, I wondered if I was the boy in the rain.