Page 43 - 914INC - Q1 - 2013

TO
HELL ANDBACK
Even when faced with personal tragedy and adversity, these Westchester business leaders still got the job done.
TEXT BY Diana Scholl PHOTOGRAPHY BY Toshi Tasaki
Stew Leonard, Jr.
PRESIDENT AND CEO, STEW LEONARD’S
he worst day of Stew Leonard, Jr.’s life was New Year’s Day, 1989.
The extended Leonard family was at their vacation home in St. Maarten. The supermarket mogul was walking around the house, blowing up balloons for his three-year-old daughter’s birthday party, and his 21-month-old son, Stew Leonard III, was following him, handing him balloons. “Then, boom, he’s not there. I ask my wife if she’d seen him, and she thought he was with me,” Leonard
remembers.
The family all ran around the property looking for
Stewie. Leonard saw a yellow t-shirt floating in the pool. “We did CPR and everything, and it was just too late,” he says.
The rest of the week was a blur. Leonard knows that his family took care of the arrangements, and American Airlines flew everyone back on New Year’s Day. “I was still in shock,” he says. “It was the most difficult day in our lives. If your parents pass away, it hurts a lot, but you expect it. It’s really different when one of your chil- dren passes. But we still had our daughter. She forced my wife and me to keep going. We had to get back into our routine.”
Leonard went to work soon after his son died. “I
could go right to the store and start working. It occupied
my time, just to get back into some routine,” he says.
Both he and his wife, Kim, agree that coping with their > son’s death was harder for her because she was a stay-
at-home mom and didn’t have work as an escape. “I
MAKEUP: Charlene Armstrong and Genese Lopez of Lash to Lens (lashtolens.com). HAIR: Keisha Massop of Kmass Hair Studio (styleseat.com/keishamassop)