Birthday? What birthday?
Callers to a certain well-known business on Thursday were greeted by a familiar voice on the other end of the line: “Pat Stewart Realtors, this is Pat.”
Yes, she was working on her birthday. She goes into work every day, and this day was no different.
Except, that it was different.
Because – and never mind that it was also St. Patrick’s Day – this wasn’t just any birthday.
It was her 95th trip around the sun.
And the business and real estate icon said she has no intentions of putting the orbiter in park just yet.
“Hey, what else am I gonna do?” Stewart mused, with a chuckle. “I have to keep coming in. If I don’t, people will start realizing they don’t need me around anymore.”
Not a chance, her buddies in the Rotary Club of Morgantown said.
That’s why everyone got together at the landmark Hotel Morgantown – location, location, location, you know – to give an Irish toast, a warm birthday wish and to tell a Pat story, or two.
Forget about all those shamrocks and leprechauns, her friends said.
Her story is one more about talent and hard work, they said, as opposed to the luck of the Irish
Even if her given name of “Patricia” was a version of “Patrick,” for the holiday she shares with her birthday.
In 1973, the serious, watershed year for women marked by the campy “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs – King won – Stewart aced it, too.
That’s when she launched her Pat Stewart Realtors company, with her husband, the late Guy Stewart, in the background as her No. 1 fan.
She was a natural at business. In Gassaway, Braxton County, where she grew up, she doubled the newspaper route of her brother when she took over after he was drafted.
In the real estate game, in a college town that busily transforming itself into a Mountain State medical and commercial hub, her firm wasn’t just a feminine force.
It was a just-plain force, and a consistent sales leader, in a house-crazy town with lots of robust competition.
That duplex on Darst? She could tell you all about it.
Leafy Suncrest? Just give her the house number.
She could calculate square footage and acreage in her head, while singing city and county code, chapter and verse. The agents she recruited worked hard and knew the neighborhoods as well as their boss.
And Pat Stewart still does all that, said her son, Jeff Stewart, a realtor in his own right at the company.
“That’s Mom,” he said, looking and smiling, as his mother was busted-up laughing at still-yet another “Pat story,” someone was bandying about.
“This is what keeps her going,” Jeff Stewart said.
“She’s a role model. She’s definitely someone that you can learn from in this business.”
Both his parents were, he said.
Pat and Guy had 70 years together, right up until his death in 2019. He was a word guy – a former newspaper reporter who worked his way up to dean of the journalism school at WVU.
She put his words to use in the beginning days in the early 1970s, and she had ideas, creativity and the tenacity to get things done.
To execute the idea.
The only time they clashed, she remembered, had nothing to do with real estate. It was over academics.
She has degrees in physical education, biology and music from WVU. When she went to graduate school, her narrative-minded husband, wielding his trademark red pen, had her rewrite her thesis – three times.
“I said, ‘Guy, if you make me write this a fourth time, we’re gonna be divorced when I’m done.”
Mainly, they just worked together, on promotions that got the firm well away from simple open houses on Sunday afternoons.
Little things, those events and sponsorships were, which turned out to be a big deal, in terms of marketing.
Christmas decorating and birdhouse-building contests.
Seed swaps.
A club for those new to Morgantown.
Fundraisers for Meals on Wheels, Habitat for Humanity and other community minded causes.
Pat’s friend, the lawmaker Barbara Evans Fleischauer, who came to the party to offer birthday wishes, is impressed that the company, like its namesake, is still at it, in the doorway of its 50th year.
“Here’s a longtime company, doing good work, founded by a woman, in her own name,” Fleischauer said. “I keep going back to that, because look at the time in women’s history when she started.”
“It’s been a good life,” the guest of honor at the Hotel Morgan said.
“It’s been pretty exciting, being part of Morgantown’s growth. This is a whole different place than it was in 1973. I’m gonna have to just keep at it, I guess.”
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