Obituaries

Carol Stearns Stroud, 87, died on January 22, 2020, following a short illness with COVID-19. She had resided in a Dolan Memory Care Home (“Clermont”) for 8½ years. She is survived by her husband, Carl Leon McGahee, four step-daughters, a nephew, Thomas Moody Stroud, and two nieces, Martha Ann Litchfield and Susan Forman. Carol was born and raised in Greensboro, N.C. Her father had a dry goods business, and her mother was a piano teacher. After one year at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta, Georgia, Carol transferred to Wake Forest University, earning a master’s degree in English in 1955. While an undergraduate, she had been inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. Following a brief stint as a high school English teacher, Carol went on to a career in business, first in Richmond, Virginia, then to New York City, where she was a copywriter for Avon Products for many years. It was when she was on a year’s assignment to London that she married Leon there on March 3, 1980. She retired the same year. Carol and Leon first lived in Bristol, TN, then moved to Huntington, WV, in 1985. When Leon changed to his third and final job as psychiatrist and professor at Saint Louis University School of Medicine in 1993, the couple settled permanently in St. Louis, and stayed on following his retirement in 1998.

During Carol’s retirement years, she did volunteer work, including maintaining flower gardens at the old Schlafly library branch, the Ronald McDonald House, Forest Park, and was also a regular poll worker. She took various courses, especially in arts and crafts, like basket weaving, bookbinding, and reupholstery. Carol developed increasing memory problems and was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2007. She volunteered for studies testing potential drug treatments, but nothing helped. When it became no longer safe for her to live at home, she was admitted at age 79 to the Clermont home, an assisted living facility. Carol will receive a green burial in Evergreen Meadow at Bellefontaine Cemetery on January 26, where a private memorial will be held. Any who wish to make contributions might consider her favorite recipients, the public libraries and the Metro transit system.