Free-spirited and lovely, she was 18 years old, just emerging from a childhood cushioned by the Edison family money. She went to a party in Clayton wearing a whimsical necklace of coins and met Eric Newman, the young man who lived across the street and happened to collect coins. He peered, carefully keeping his eyes at neck level. Would you like to go out? he asked. “Sure,” she said, flattered by the attentions of a man of 27. Tonight? he asked. “Oh no, I can’t do that.”
He showed up a few nights later, carrying a Jacob’s ladder, and took her to see a 2,000-year-old Indian mound in South City. “This guy is some nerd,” she thought, amused, and invited him back to her house. “Out of character, I started to make hot chocolate, and I steamed up the entire kitchen, and he was unimpressed,” she says. “Six months later, we were married.”
The eccentricity never ended—you honeymooned off the coast of Uruguay.
And got caught in the battle between the German battleship [Admiral] Graf Spee and the British.
And you traveled…everywhere.
Travel has really shaped my fundraising ideas. They’re nearly always related to visual concepts, and structured in a way that makes them different from the ordinary. I came up with the idea for the Butterfly House in Chiang Mai, [Thailand], when I saw their butterflies.
And you saw the Roma in Europe; that would have prompted the Gypsy Caravan.
It was a different way of selling stuff. So was the flea market.
What prompted the Greater St. Louis Book Fair, now one of the country’s oldest and largest?
I heard about a book sale at a church in New York. So I started asking everybody for books and storing them in my basement, because I was kind of bored as a young bride.
Did you read a lot?
I’m more of a reader now than I was. But I’m really a merchant. That’s the way I envision myself.
Retail’s in your blood—you grew up hearing about the Edison Brothers shoe business.
The conversation at dinner, the whole family being involved in marketing, was very interesting to me. But of course the women—in those days, the men started in the warehouse, but the women didn’t.
So you struck out for yourself.
My first foray into merchandising, I heard of a department store in Cincinnati where a woman had started an antique shop. So I marched into Famous-Barr—Stanley Goodman was the head under Morton May, and he had such incredible taste. He’s the one who brought in the French bread, the onion soup… He asked what the antique shop would look like. I said I’d call it The Bird in Hand. He said, “That is the worst name I ever heard.” I was so angry, I teared up.
But you prevailed.
I was determined to call it that. Then Stanley began to enlarge the whole thing. We bought an English taxi to deliver the parcels.
Shopping was more fun back then.
We’re about to embark on a reincarnation of a lot of this stuff. For instance, I’m a real foodie, and one of the most interesting trends is the food truck, which in my opinion is just in its infancy. I remember a man who would come down the street selling vegetables. Wouldn’t that be fun today?
Fun’s kind of your secret, I suspect. You’re great at throwing a party.
My favorite was The Clothes Off Your Back Ball. It was a fundraiser for “Vanity Fair,” a costumed exhibit I wanted to bring to the Saint Louis Art Museum. We had a party at Plaza Frontenac, and you came in clothes, and you took your clothes off, and you put on a plastic bag. When Eric was in Boston having a hip replacement, I saw these bags go by on a conveyor at the hospital and thought, “Oh my gosh, that would be great for this party!” We danced in these plastic bags tied with red yarn tassels. The police stopped people on their way home. It was really a great event.
What are your criteria for a good idea?
It has to carry its own weight. It has to be worth it. Just to diddle around… That’s why the concept has to be very good. You have to have a feeling about trends, about what is au courant. What it takes now is imaginative thinking about how to adapt that idea, turn it into something people will enjoy… Every church, everybody has little ideas about going and doing something, and they are not turned into concepts.
You don’t, well, diddle around, as you put it. You think big.
That’s right. But you only get big if you can capture the interest of people.
What’s the difference between a great idea and a gimmick?
Let’s say you start with something good. Then you begin to copy it. In the copying, it gets diluted and is not really organic anymore. That’s when it gets to be gimmicky. It’s also a matter of good taste, which is very hard to qualify.
I never realized you were the first executive director of Forest Park Forever. How’d you get that idea?
We looked to New York’s Central Park. Remember when it was really awful? Well, there were a couple people who worked on that, and we worked with them. Then, when I saw the butterfly effort in Chiang Mai, I thought, “Oh my gosh, what a fantastic idea for the Jewel Box. Perfect.” We began to work with the city. It just. Didn’t. Happen. Like so many things.
So St. Louis County gave you the land instead, and the city missed its chance—which wouldn’t be the first time. If you were going to give this city some advice…?
I think there is a group of people called naysayers, and they are everywhere. And if these people are allowed to rule, then it fails. There is another group of people called risk-takers, and risk-takers are a lot smaller in number, it seems to me. And that’s what you’ve got to be. St. Louis is inhibited by the old-line conservatism. I see it in terms of city-county; in repetitive boards; institutions that don’t move; lack of inclusion—totally separate layers. And the naysayers, these people who just can’t adapt themselves. It’s very sad.
And it’s almost a shock when something does come off.
When that happens, like Citygarden, it’s because somebody has been good enough to get out there and do it. It has to be somebody’s money. But how many people are going to do that?
After a 1997 speech by former Sen. John Danforth, you had a wonderfully scathing quote urging St. Louis 2004 to concentrate on downtown’s existing buildings, not on “hokey glitz.” How do you decide when to speak out and when to stay mum?
Well, the only time I really speak my mind is when somebody asks me directly. So many people are afraid of the way it’s going to sound, the way it’s going to affect their being. But after a while, you just don’t give a damn.
You had your own PR company for years, the Evelyn E. Newman Group.
We just disbanded it. My first office was in Union Station among the pigeons, I think in 1968. I remember people saying, “Why are you working? You don’t have to work.” Well, first of all, receiving a paycheck and working is tantamount to success, and that was extremely valuable for me to feel. I can’t imagine retiring. I just can’t imagine it.
What was your hardest project?
I don’t know. The most disappointing, though, was back at Famous Barr. I advertised in the London Telegraph for the contents of a manor house. I got two answers, one in northern England and one in Northern Ireland. Eric and I visited. The northern England one was a disaster, but the house in Northern Ireland was incredible. A 15th-century square block of a house, and the man who lived in it had a tremendous bill at the pub and needed money. There were trunks full of silver, a whole room of miniature paintings, a library of books, the most fascinating stuff I ever saw. So my boss at Famous said I should inventory the house, and we would make an offer. I sent the people from Sotheby’s to look at paintings. I knew something about the value of the furniture and silver. I wanted to take all this material back and set up the whole second floor of Famous Barr as the castle. We negotiated for two years, and then my boss said, “Evelyn, you better see if the man has sold off any of the material.” And he’d sold some of the Irish silver, which was very, very pricey. So we backed away from the deal.
You’ve been married 74 years, lived in Eric’s boyhood home 74 years, seen the world. What’s the secret to a long and contented marriage?
Respect. You need a partner in order to really be successful—and I mean the right kind of partner. Times have changed, of course. Eric Newman never changed diapers. You just didn’t do that. We had an upstairs girl and a downstairs girl. It was a different life. But still: respect.
How do you bear the endless committee meetings, though?
I don’t, anymore. After you reach a certain age, you can say no. There were a lot of wasted times when I was doing those things. It was sort of part of the bargain: If you said you were going to do it, by God, you did it. But people on committees—they don’t want to go home! They want to be heard. In fact, they only come in order to be heard. They don’t want to do anything. It’s to be a member of the club, so to speak.
How did you come to start the ScholarShop?
I heard you could ask for donated clothing and give a tax deduction for it. The only place I remember that took clothes at the time was Goodwill. There were no places that had upscale clothing. And it just caught on. Today, the net profit is something like $1.2 million every year.
What’s your next idea?
I have a favorite in the pipeline that will probably never get done, but would be such fun. In 1904, Cabanne Spring in Forest Park was so popular, because the water was so phenomenal, that people stood in line to get it. There was huge publicity about it, and they examined the water and it was precisely wonderful. I think it would be such fun to reactivate that spring. Now, the naysayers may come in and say it’s not possible, but I think it is. I know where the spring is. I think it can be done.
Now, at age 93, you’re writing a blog, The Savvy Sage.
I’m trying to understand the Internet. I try to understand their minds, out in Silicon Valley, how they think about these things. It’s exciting. This Twitter thing, though… [She shakes her head.] But I like the fact that you can reach people you don’t ordinarily reach. And younger people today are interested in early exploits, the fact that we had early experiences—eavesdropping by spies during the war in Czechoslovakia. Drinking fermented mare’s milk in Afghanistan. Meeting astronauts who came through when we were in Madagascar. I remember the kinds of things we took as gifts to people—nylon stockings, we gave to a leper colony, which used them for bandages.
So you’re organizing 2,000 travel photos, and Eric, who’s 102, recently discovered Audubon’s first etching engraved on a rare banknote and published an article about it. How do you keep your brains so pliable?
It’s a matter of curiosity, I think.
You’ve playfully called yourself a sage. What’s your definition of wisdom?
I think wisdom comes from experience. I think. What do you think?
I think it’s knowing you’re not sure!
[She smiles.] One of the things that interests me a lot is how intuitive language is. I could go up to a woman sitting in front of a hut in Africa, and I can do this [she stair-steps her hand, indicating heights of children] and communicate with her without any problem.
What’s changed over the years that you regret?
That there’s been no change! Honestly! The plateau of nothingness. I mean, it’s sad. I don’t worry about it—I’m off on other things—but it’s just so sad.
At least your own life’s not like that.
It’s been very interesting to get older and focus on moving ahead. I feel very fortunate that I’m able to still manufacture things in my head. Many of our friends are not here anymore, and a lot of them are… [She shakes her head, as if it’s clouded.]
Why do so many people let their world shrink and their brain just dry up?
Well, a lot of them never did do anything. It’s a matter of curiosity.
➡ Read more about the legacy of Evelyn's family in our September 2015 feature, A City of Families.
