Stewart B. Knower ’56

Stewart “Tooie” Knower died from heart problems Aug. 24, 2010.  

After graduation from Princeton, Stewart and some friends were arrested for gunrunning when they stopped in Cuba during a Caribbean cruise on his yacht Gemini because they had a couple of guns aboard. He was proud of his mug shot, which appeared in Cuban newspapers.

Stewart grew up in Jacksonville, Fla., by his beloved St. John’s River, and was an excellent horseman in his youth. His real-estate career clientele included many well-known and colorful people, such as Arthur Godfrey and Rudolf Nureyev. When Madeleine Albright became secretary of state, he wrote to her, his old Washington Young Republicans Speaker’s Club friend, saying that he’d always known she’d make a good secretary some day.  

He engineered the rescue of the Alexandria Lyceum while president of the Northern Virginia chapter of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in the 1960s. Stewart passionately advocated for environmentally sound development for more than 30 years, and was still working toward a better balance between man and earth when he died.

Stewart is survived by his wife of 26 years, Kathleen Freeland; his stepchildren, Sarah, Renny, and Jennifer Babiarz and their families; and his sister, Brooks Riley.