After a long illness, Stew died Feb. 20, 2003. Most of his life was spent in the area of his birth, Short Hills, N.J. He prepared at the Hill School. At Princeton he majored in psychology, was captain of the freshman baseball team, and lettered in baseball during his upperclass years. His club was Ivy.
During WWII he was a lieutenant in the Army Air Corps, serving in the European-African-Middle Eastern campaign as a pilot forward artillery observer. After the war, Stew joined his father at the Bank of Manhattan, where Stew became senior vice president at the merged Chase Manhattan Bank. He was named president of Alpha Portland Cement in 1964, and later president of the Garden State Bank of Hackensack, N.J.
Stew was active in New York-area civic affairs: board member of the Greater New York Boy Scout Council and the N.Y. Convention and Visitors Center, secretary of St. Luke's Hospital, trustee of the Grolier Foundation, and president of the board of Miss Hall's School in Pittsfield.
He is survived by his wife, Robin; four children, Beverly Baker Vincent, John III, Charles, and Elizabeth Baker Karafa; three stepchildren; two sisters; 14 grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren. To them all, his classmates extend their sympathies.
The Class of 1940