Jewell Stoddard, 1933-2026

Bill and Maggie Stone were not trying to be funny when they named their seventh child Jewell. Mostly they called her Judy.

Jewell grew up in Graniteville, a  mill town in the pinewoods of the South Carolina Piedmont. There she developed her love of the woods, taking walks in the pine hills with her father when he visited his friend, a long-bearded hermit named Shag Jones.

Jewell’s father Bill Stone ended his career advancement at the town cotton mill by refusing to join the Klan. He instilled in Jewell a deep sense of decency. Bill would stop by the railyard during the Depression and bring people home for dinner. Once, their weekly groceries were stolen from the kitchen, but her dad refused to call the police, saying “Whoever took those groceries needed them more than we did.”

Thanks to the town librarian, Jewell fell in love with books. To avoid the family’s scorn, she read unseen in her hiding place behind the sofa.

No women in her family went to college but Jewell’s determination was likewise inspired by the subversive town librarian. Jewell bewildered her family further by insisting on heading north to Washington DC so she could attend a racially integrated college. Teased for her southern accent upon her arrival at American University, Jewell lost it post haste. She graduated with a B.A. in English Literature.

Jewell married Arthur Kraft, a journalist who covered international trade for MacMillan. Art’s family embraced Jewell, and the Krafts became her new family.

Arthur died on Christmas Eve 1958, leaving Jewell widowed with a toddler son, Philip. Jewell’s oldest brother Carl reached out to tell her “the family would be willing to take her back”, apparently ready to forgive her triple sins of moving north, getting educated among Blacks, and marrying a Jew. Jewell recounted, “I told him to go fuck himself.”  

The Krafts remained our core family, looking after Jewell and me during the rough times following Arthur’s death. 

To support the two of us, Jewell got a job assisting DC Circuit judge David Bazelon with his work on legal rights for the mentally ill. Judge Bazelon urged Jewell to attend law school, but she declined. She took me along to Civil Rights marches in Washington DC and I joined her walking door to door collecting funds to support Democrats running for office.

My Grandpa Lou, known in the Kraft family as “Pop”, gave Jewell money to buy a car. A VW Beetle would have been an economical choice, but Jewell knew these cars were built with Nazi slave labor during the war, and she would not disrespect Pop with such a purchase. Instead, she bought a small British Ford, a total lemon that often failed to start, a trait that filled our lives with serendipity. 

One snowy morning in 1961, a nice man who lived in our apartment complex helped Jewell get our little car started. I took to asking Jewell “When are we going to see the nice man again?” 

In time I learned his name was “Ted Theodore Stoddard”. Sometimes as I peered from the window of our 3rd floor walk-up, eagerly awaiting Jewell’s return from work, she diverted from the direct path to stop by Ted’s flat in the adjacent apartment block for “a drink” – HEY! They fell in love and married on the Ides of March in 1962. The Kraft family embraced Ted as well.

Jewell stopped working to travel overseas with Ted, me in tow. We had a great time exploring Cyprus, Egypt, and Ethiopia. Eight months after our return from Ethiopia, Andrew was born in 1964.

In 1968, Jewell found a new career teaching third and fourth grades at Green Acres School. Her former student, Professor Manuel Lerdau, describes her as ”… one of those rare grownups who talked with kids as though we were adults, and we responded as if we were. I still remember talking with her, when I was a third grader, about a hagiographic [look it up] biography of Andrew Jackson that I had read. Jewell used it as a chance to point me toward books with different viewpoints. She taught me to think of reading as both an end and a means.”

In 1977, Jewell and three colleagues from Green Acres started the first children’s bookstore in the U.S., Cheshire Cat Children’s Books, on Connecticut Avenue south of Chevy Chase Circle. Book industry experts told the partners that a bookstore could not succeed selling children’s books alone. The store thrived and became a fixture in Washington DC. While Amy Carter shopped at the store, her Secret Service detail bought books for their own children.

Jewell befriended all the children’s authors; her favorites included Maurice Sendak, Tomie de Paola, and Allen Say. Jewell told me that when Jimmy Carter came by the store to sign books he could inscribe his name while talking to a customer and without looking down. She once joined Dr. Seuss for breakfast, who thanked his hosts for not serving green eggs and ham. Her shelves at home were filled with signed first editions. 

Jewell’s children and grandchildren always received the best of children’s books, inscribed by the authors, for holiday gifts or because the author had been by the store with a new book and she thought a particular child would like it.

As an extra attraction for the store, Jewell raised monarch butterflies from the egg – when the caterpillars were ready to pupate she moved them to a tree branch in the front window. In a week, they would emerge as butterflies and be released. A flock of humans gathered on the sidewalk each morning to watch the butterflies emerge. Her butterfly window was featured prominently in the Washington Post.

Jewell served on all the children’s literature award committees including for the Caldecott and Newbery Medals. A master of digital bookstore management, Jewell carried five digital devices wherever she traveled.

Jewell ran the Cheshire Cat for 22 years before closing up shop and moving her inventory and staff to Politics and Prose (P&P), farther down Connecticut Ave. In her first year in the basement at P&P she sold a million dollars’ worth of children’s books; the owners said “We’ll get you anything you need.” Jewell retired from P&P at the age of 80. 

In her spare time, Jewell was a gourmet cook, a consummate gardener, and a voracious reader.

Jewell loved going for walks in Rock Creek Park, Hughes Hollow, Chincoteague, and her native South Carolina pine woods. In her back yard on Turner Lane, she created a wildflower garden of native plants that she salvaged from the immediate path of the Capitol Beltway through Rock Creek Park.

Sticking around Washington on Christmas Eve was hard for Jewell, so in 1967 she decided we should blow town and escape to Chincoteague Island for the holiday. Within a year, the extended family had joined us. “Chincoteague” evolved into special week of walks, feasts, and revelry, a tradition closing in on six decades.

* * *

On March 10, 2026, Jewell passed away, surrounded by family in a house in the woods, a setting she described as “the best vacation ever”. She was 92, five days shy of her and Ted’s 64^th wedding anniversary.

Jewell leaves behind her husband Ted (99), her two sons, me and Andrew, and a passel of well-read grandchildren, great nieces, great nephews, and so on.

Jewell didn’t want a funeral but we figure we can get away with a potluck remembrance lunch for family and close friends. Such is planned for April 12, 2026.