.jpg)
Editorial
Mary Stuart McGuire Gilliam was a pillar of our community for the past 74 years. She was a visionary and pioneer, contributing in indelible ways to historic preservation and protection of the environment. She was also a genteel southern lady whose friendship and charm were treasured by many.
Gilliam, who died May 10 at age 98, helped found the Historic Lexington Foundation and served as a member of the Virginia Commission on Outdoor Recreation through two gubernatorial administrations in the 1970s. During her tenure on the commission, the Virginia Outdoors Plan was developed and the Land and Water Conservation Fund established that helped pay for the construction of Lake Robertson, Blue Ridge Recreation Park in Fairfield and Glen Maury Park in Buena Vista.
When she received the Rockbridge Area Conservation Council Lifetime Award in 2015, it was noted that she had played important roles in saving House Mountain from development, directing Young Life’s Christian youth camp away from Jump Mountain and to the more environmentally appropriate Rockbridge Alum Springs property where today it is flourishing, and helping prevent the Boy Scouts of America from bringing its huge National Scout Jamboree and 240,000 scouts to pristine woodlands near Goshen Pass.
In 1966, Gilliam’s leadership proved pivotal in the creation of HLF in response to historically significant structures in the downtown area being threatened with demolition. She and others contributed to efforts to save and restore the Barclay House and the Alexander-Withrow House. A family member recalls that she used her connections in founding the organization: “[HLF] started in the Gilliams’ living room over drinks with friends like Tut Tutwiler, Gillie Campbell and Royster Lyle.”
Gilliam witnessed much history in her nearly century of life. She was born in Richmond in 1925 in an era that was still recovering from the Civil War, into a large extended family that included Stonewall Jackson’s surgeon, Dr. Hunter McGuire, Gilliam’s greatgrandfather. In the 1950s, Gilliam and one of her brothers participated in a commemoration of the burial of Jackson’s severed arm.
She was part of a pack of young cousins who enjoyed life in the summers at Brookbury, a farm outside of Richmond, overseen by the person she most adored and strove to emulate: her grandmother, Cyane Bemiss. As adults, her cousin Gerry Bemiss would recall those days when Gilliam was appointed to her state post on the commission on outdoor recreation.
A multi-talented person, Gilliam was at heart an excellent artist in several media. After graduating from Sweet Briar College (described in the 1947 yearbook as having a “volatile imagination”), she attended art school at Richmond Professional Institute (now Virginia Commonwealth University). She was never to fulfill her father’s wish that she become a medical illustrator, though: having met Mac Gilliam at her coming-out party, they married in 1950. The young couple settled in Lexington, where Mac was a history professor at Virginia Military Institute.
Many people admired her as a perfect embodiment of an “old-fashioned Southern lady,” but she kept pace with the times and politics, making her iPad, digital photo frame and cell phone central to her life. At one point, she subscribed to both Mother Jones and the Wall Street Journal.
The garden at her house in the midst of Jackson Avenue was a landmark for even those who never knew her. But she would most want to be recalled as the hostess at the Gilliams’ home on Hays Creek in Rockbridge Baths, where she did indeed fulfill a Southern dream for over 30 years, complete with her famous caramel cupcakes and lace cookies.
With her garden being her pride and joy, it was noted in her obituary that her “poppies, peonies and roses were appropriately in peak bloom the day she died, in celebration of her life and the work she devoted to them.”
Second only to her grandmother, the person she most adored in life was her son Jay, himself an ardent environmentalist, who was her constant companion, collaborator and caretaker over the course of her later life. He has been very much her peer in his attention to her every need and detail – like his mother, an artist in the performance of what life assigns us.
Mary Stuart Gilliam’s was a life well-lived. She made her mark in our community and will truly be missed.
