LOOKING BACK
Young Chang
T. Duncan Stewart had a sense of humor.
As an active member of the Newport Beach community who had a hand in
everything from banning local oil-well drilling to building businesses
and homes, he earned the name “city watchdog” as he went about caring,
and caring through verse at that.
Stewart, who died in 1987, was named poet laureate by the city in
1978. Here’s an excerpt from one of his poems, to show how funny Stewart
could be.
It’s from “The Phase on the Bathroom Floor,” which refers to the
city’s 1957 water shortage and was given to the Daily Pilot by former
mayor Bob Shelton. Shelton had asked for suggestions on saving water back
then. One of them was to put a brick in the toilet tank, and so Stewart
submitted his poem to the city council.
The first stanza reads:
o7 “Dear City Council, I rush,
To inform you, the thought makes me blush,
That I’ve put in the bricks
But my toilet now sticks
And the darn thing refuses to flush.”
f7 The third stanza continues:
o7 “Dear Council, I won’t be evasive,
Your kindness is highly persuasive,
But beyond my control
The bricks in the bowl
Are now lodged, and they’re very abrasive.”
f7 Stewart was a Kansas native who studied through a music
scholarship at the Juilliard School in Manhattan and moved to Newport
Beach with his wife Jerry in 1949.
James Felton’s “Newport Beach, The First Century, 1888-1988” tells us
Stewart, also a talented violinist who performed in area convalescent
homes, lived in Corona del Mar. The Corona del Mar Civic Assn. eventually
made him chair of its acquisition committee. Stewart and his wife also
held numerous fund-raisers for the city.
His building accomplishments included solar-energy homes.
The Newport Harbor Chamber of Commerce named him “Man of the Year”
more than two decades ago and he won the Orange County Bar Assn.’s
Liberty Bell Award and others.
Richard Luehrs, president of the Newport Beach Chamber of Commerce,
said the chamber also named him Citizen of the Year in 1979.
One of Stewart’s most known works is an epic poem called “The Legend
of Thomas Rule,” which concludes Felton’s history book and is about one
of Newport Beach’s folk heroes.
Among the middle stanzas are these lines:
o7 “Or silently return below
From whence I called you up today,
And through the ages you will row
To help me fashion Newport Bay.
I have such wondrous plans for it --
We’ll have a city that’s a gem;
I’ll change each cove, each bar and spit
Each cliff will be a diadem.”
f7
* Do you know of a person, place or event that deserves a historical
Look Back? Let us know. Contact Young Chang by fax at (949) 646-4170;
e-mail at young.chang@latimes.com; or mail her at c/o Daily Pilot, 330 W.
Bay St., Costa Mesa, CA 92627.
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