Advent of Nordstrom, et al. sparks excitement

By LENNIE BENNETT

© St. Petersburg Times,
published July 15, 2001

The folks from Nordstrom came to the downtown offices of the St. Petersburg Times on Wednesday to meet with writers and editors from the business and features departments. And me.

How excited am I that International Plaza opens this fall in Tampa with lots of new stores and shops, including Nordstrom? Very. I do not plan to forsake my old favorites, Tyrone Square and West Shore malls -- after all, how many Louis Vuitton dog carriers and Swarovski chandeliers can a person use? -- but what fun it is going to be to have so many choices so accessibly.

In addition to the mall's grand opening, some of the department stores have planned their own opening nights that will benefit community organizations. About these I have mixed feelings.

I am dismayed that Nordstrom has chosen only Tampa groups as beneficiaries. A pre-opening fundraiser benefited the Junior League of Tampa and the opening party on Sept. 10 will benefit St. Joseph's Hospital. Certainly the Junior League of Tampa and St. Joseph's Hospital are worthy groups, but hey, guys, we have excellent hospitals and Junior Leagues in St. Petersburg and Clearwater, too.

This, to me, is one more example of newcomers who sometimes mistakenly think the epicenter of the Tampa Bay universe is Tampa. What county has the great beaches, beautiful, non-industrial downtown waterfronts, great parks, professional baseball and a vibrant arts community? It isn't Hillsborough.

Neiman Marcus, to its credit, has done its homework and realized that we are a multicommunity market. Its black-tie gala Sept. 13 will benefit the Museum of Fine Arts and the Mahaffey Theater Foundation in St. Petersburg, Ruth Eckerd Hall and the Gulf Coast Museum of Art in north Pinellas County, and the Tampa Museum of Art and the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center.

I do not routinely report on weddings, but this is a special story. Former St. Petersburg residents Ann Martha Eustis and Allan Shad were married Saturday at Oatlands Plantation in Leesburg, Va. Theirs was a long, circuitous route to the altar.

The Eustis and Shadd families were neighbors for many years here. The Eustis girls -- Renata, Kathryn and Ann Martha -- played with the six Shad siblings, Allan and his twin brother, Blaine, David, Leslie, Leigh Anne and Steve. But Ann Eustis, 41, said: "I would always play with Allan and his twin would play with Renata. We made deals with them. We would play war with them if they would play house with us. But we never dated. We were just friends."

After John Eustis' death in 1975, their mother, Ruthilde, moved the family to Washington, D.C., and life went on. About a year ago, Allan Shad, who had divorced and was living in Dallas, started thinking about what he wished he could do over in his life and decided he wanted to try to locate Ann.

An Internet search yielded three Ann Eustises, none of them his former neighbor. When he searched under A. Eustis, he got an unwieldy list of 3,000. He then searched for her sister Renata's name and came up with only one entry. He called Renata, who is soon to be ordained as a Lutheran minister in West Virginia, and persuaded her to give him Ann's phone number. Ann was living in Maryland, an education professor at Towson University.

"I had just that day decided to buy a house," she said. "It was July 31. For 17 years I rented because I thought buying a house would be the kiss of death to ever getting married. He called that night. He was relentless after that."

So much so that when they decided to get married, he quit his job in Texas, moved to Maryland and was hired by a large construction company in D.C. to be its senior purchasing agent.

They chose Oatlands, a beautiful old house and gardens owned by the National Trust, because it was once the home, in the early 1900s, of Edith and William Corcoran Eustis, distant relatives, and one of the gardens is named after their daughter Ann. "I decided that if I ever married, it would be in the Ann Eustis Garden," said Ann Martha Eustis.

Ruthilde Eustis died in 1990, but all the Eustis and Shad siblings attended, Blaine flying in from Venezuela, Steve Shad and Leigh Anne Shad Stewart, both from St. Petersburg, along with Allan's mother, Shelby Shad, who now lives in St. Pete Beach. Also in the local contingent were U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Paul Roney and his wife, Sally Eustis Roney, Ann's aunt, and two of their children, Tim Roney (with wife Sandy) and Susan Roney.

Members of the law firm Thompson and Goodis recently took a road trip to Sarasota for a party at the new home of their fellow Doctor of Jurisprudence Lynn Grosclose and his wife, Sharon. Jeff and Heather Goodis arranged for a party bus to transport the group that included Jim and Laurie Thompson, Jim and Alice Thompson, Todd and Chandra Miller, Sean and Lisa Hooker, Jeff and Erin Shimer, Maria Somers, and John and Penny Richardson. Goodis said they played word games on the way down and, because the converted van's cooling system was not designed for groups, were kept cool by -- get this -- a window air-conditioner with a generator strapped onto it. I call that American ingenuity.

LOOKING AHEAD

Monday

A PARTY FOR THEATER UNITY: You are invited to join supporters of American Stage Theatre Company, Palladium Theater, Mahaffey Theater, Eckerd Theater Company of Ruth Eckerd Hall and Live-Arts Peninsula Foundation for a gathering to "connect, exchange news and ideas, and create a sense of unity and camaraderie among those who toil in this exciting but difficult field," says the invitation. Backstage Lounge, Mahaffey Theater, 400 First St. S, St. Petersburg. 8-10 p.m. livearts2001@cs.com. Reservations are not necessary.

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