Because of ‘Butch’ Stewart I pay it forward

Dear Editor,

When I got my scholarship to Cornell University in 1983 it was a full ride, except for the US$750 that my family had to contribute to my freshman year. Given my family’s resources, that amount might as well have been a million dollars.

At the time, my father worked for Appliance Traders Limited (ATL). He’d started working right about when the first Sandals was being born. My father was not an executive at ATL, but all his life he “moved good” with people. That’s just who he was. He also had a lot of pride about being able to take care of his family on his own steam. However, he loved his wife and children more than he did his pride.

Knowing how hard I had worked over the years — always striving for and usually achieving first place in my class at Convent of Mercy Academy “Alpha”, studying into the wee hours of the morning, being named my high school class valedictorian, doing everything I could to earn that scholarship — he took the action he thought would get me what I needed. He gathered up my report cards and the acceptance telegram from Cornell and made an appointment with Gordon “Butch” Stewart, who’d started and led both ATL and Sandals.

Stewart gave me the money and away I went. There was never any talk of my father paying him back.

Adjusting to the cold, snowy grey of Ithaca, New York, was very difficult for me. I even had to take a leave of absence at one point. But I went back and kept at it because I knew my parents and one stranger, Butch Stewart, had invested in me. I graduated and have gone on to have a very good life.

Along my way I’ve met kings, queens, presidents, top business leaders, and lots of other, as they say, important people. But a meeting I will never forget and always treasure happened shortly after I’d graduated and was working in the retail industry in Manhattan. I don’t remember now how I got invited or what the event was. What I knew was that it would be held on a boat leaving from a West Side pier and that Butch Stewart was going to be there.

By then he was well-renowned. I shyly made my way to him through the crowd that surrounded him, told him my name, told him who my father was, and thanked him for what he had done for me and our family. I realised I’d not had any need to be nervous or shy. He was gracious, humble, and kind; a boss for sure, but a human being first of all. He said he was sure my family must be very proud of me and that I was to keep on making them proud.

Sometimes I get asked to help others who just need that last push to get to the top of the hill or an encouraging word to keep striving towards it. Each time I do help I remember that 18-yearold girl whose life was changed by someone who’d never met her, except on paper; someone who simply could have turned my father away.

I will always remember Butch Stewart and I realise I also want to make him proud by paying forward what he gave me. Based on my experience, it comes as no surprise that the Sandals Foundation exists.

Like my parents, he is physically gone too, but his actions live on.

Suzanne Mcfayden Writer and philanthropist