Jo-Anne Coe: In Memoriam

July 19, 1933 - September 27, 2002

Mom was the one who first found and fell in love with Cleydael -- and who, when I started looking at options for moving to the country, suggested that we buy a place together. Although she'd always prefered newer houses because of the ease in upkeep, my search for an older, preferably antebellum property interested her as she'd grown tired of executive subdivision repro-Victorian houses where nothing seems to be made of actual wood. After a lifetime of her thinking I was a bit weird for being so obsessed with history, the house started working its magic on her. She would call me up excited that she'd found a new website on historic houses, or had discovered a good Civil War book, or new information about Cleydael that we'd not had already. While I'm supposed to be the Internet geek in the family, it was mom who found the 1937 WPA historical inventory website which has yielded a wealth of information, not only because of the listing about Cleydael but also the listings for other Stuart properties such as Cedar Grove and Panorama, and the cemeteries at Cedar Grove and St. Paul's Church. It was mom, while looking for a church to join locally when she moved down to King George, who discovered that the lumber for the Catholic Church in King George was milled at Cleydael by the Richardson family. Together, we joined the King George Historical Society and were on the verge of becoming the first associate members of the newly formed Stuart Society, so that we could share information with Stuart descendants in our research on Cleydael.

For mother's day, my mom asked me to show her around the antique shops of Fredericksburg. Prior to Cleydael, she had always preferred good quality reproduction "traditional" furniture to actual antiques, but the house had her hooked on history. Next, she began buying antiques on Ebay and found that she had a natural "eye" for things despite being new to all this.

She joined the Central Virginia Battlefields Trust, initially founded by Jim Pates, city attorney for Fredericksburg and husband of Susan, our superb realtor for Cleydael. Upset about the proposed gargantuan development at Chancellorsville, she also joined the Civil War Preservation Trust, run by Jim Lighthizer, the brother of her long standing friend and fellow Bob Dole staffer Bob Lighthizer. At the time of her death, she was still Chief of Staff to Senator Dole, having worked for him for nearly 35 years, in which time she served as the first woman to be Secretary of the US Senate, as fundraising director of the Dole for President campaign, and as Deputy Finance Chairman of the Republican National Committee.

She was so excited about the prospect of shifting from worknig full time to working a three day week and mostly telecommuting from Cleydael. The plan was that we'd get the dog fencing in and Jeff would look after the dogs while she got her Fairfax county house on the market, then I'd move down to Cleydael first while construction work was going on for the kitchen wing and that Mom would gradually transition from being there on weekends to being there full time by Christmas. Alas, it was not to be. On September 26, she went to work in the morning and took the afternoon off to go to Lowes to finalize the purchase of the kitchen cabinets for Cleydael. On her way home she started feeling unwell and by the time she got home called me to say she thought she should get it checked. We went to the emergency room and they did a scan and it turned out she had an abdominal aortic aneurysm which had partially ruptured. She was rushed into emergency surgery but passed away three hours later.

It still seems unbelievable. She was comparatively young and she was so full of plans for things she wanted to do at Cleydael. Our whole effort at the house will be a memorial to her.

-- Kathryn Coombs

Cleydael is a private home. please respect our privacy and do not visit without an invitation. (Unless, of course, you're somebody we know, in which case y'all come!!
-- but phone first and give us a heads up and be expected to be handed a paint brush!)

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Jo-Anne Coe: In Memoriam
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