George Baker Stevenson, May 24 1968 - November 15 2023
George Stevenson was born in Milwaukee. His father’s work took the family to Düsseldorf and Heidelberg Germany, back to Milwaukee, to Jonesboro, Arkansas, and to Brussels, Belgium where his parents had met and started their family. Over the five years in Brussels, George attended the International School and developed his lifelong love of the visual arts and Belgian beer. As head chorister at Holy Trinity, the Anglican-Episcopal Pro-Cathedral in Brussels, he began a relationship with music which would be a defining element of his life.
The family moved to Jackson, Mississippi, where George graduated from St. Andrews Episcopal School. He attended Sewanee, the University of the South, majoring in the art history his childhood years in Europe had so well prepared him for. Membership in Phi Gamma Delta (Fiji) created lifelong friendships and hosting a weekly radio show of Delta blues gave him a chance to grow and deepen his knowledge and love of music.
As a Boy Scout (Eagle Scout and Order of the Arrow), George developed an interest in cooking while planning the meals for camping trips around the Benelux. After graduating from Sewanee and managing the iconic Sewanee institution Shenanigans for several years, he decided to turn his career in that direction and enrolled in the New England Culinary Institute in Montpelier, Vermont. He apprenticed at Nashville’s Sunset Grill and then moved to Seattle where he trained in the kitchen of Susan Spicer. He shifted from restaurant work to gourmet catering, where career highlights included catering Bill and Melinda Gates’ millennium New Year’s Eve party and the dinner they gave for Nelson Mandela, along with Sally Nordstrom’s 70th birthday.
Feeling the need for a sabbatical, he decided to take a break from it all and spent a year traveling in China, India, Thailand and Vietnam. The trip alternated solo travel and meeting up with friends. He documented this life changing voyage in stunning photographs.
Returning to Seattle he focused on working with wineries including Chateau Ste. Michelle, Matthew’s Winery and Di Stefano Winery where he was the executive chef and with whom he had deep personal ties. Always a fierce cyclist, he began to compete in triathlons around the Pacific Northwest. A book commission took him around the region and led to the publication of the VegOut Vegetarian Guide to Seattle and Portland.
Tiring of the weather and missing the South, he returned to his beloved Sewanee where he was the chef at Pearl’s and then executive chef of the reopening of the Sewanee Inn. He reconnected with the Sewanee Volunteer Fire Department of which he was a faithful and long serving member. Widely traveled throughout Europe and especially Italy, he was a member of the Honor Guard of the Royal Tombs of the Pantheon and received the service medal for his hours spent standing guard at the tomb of Victor Emanuel II. These were happy years of quiet mornings with birdwatching, coffee and sudoku on the deck of Lightning Bug Cottage, the house he had bought so many years before, and evenings of good beer and old friends.
George’s memory began to falter, and he was diagnosed with the early onset dementia he lost his father to. He was able to continue working in a reduced capacity for a number of years, though recently that had come to an end. On the 11th of November he had a seizure and never regained consciousness. He died four days later.
George will be remembered for his great and true love of his friends and family, his fabulous cooking, raffish good looks and his wickedly dry humor.
George was the son of the Rev’d Canon Anne Broad Stevenson and the late Robert Baker Stevenson. His grandparents were the late Charles and Octavia (Occie) Broad of Jackson, Mississippi, and the late Robert and Cleo Stevenson of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is survived by his mother, his sisters Catherine Stevenson and Sarah Stevenson, his brother-in-law Nathan Dupree, nephew Robert Dupree, niece Alice Dupree, Jane Warren, aunt Octavia (Tay) Broad and cousins Octavia (Via) Fortier, Charles Broad, III and Allison Broad, and a beautiful network of real and meaningful connections built over a life very well lived.
A funeral will be held at Christ Church Cathedral, Nashville, Tennessee on Thursday, December 28th at 11:00 a.m. with visitation in the parish hall at 10:00.
A memorial service will be held in Seattle on December 10th, and a celebration of life is being planned in Sewanee to take place in the new year.
In lieu of flowers donations may be made to the Audubon Society (https://www.audubon.org/ ) or to the Sewanee Volunteer Fire Department through the University (https://new.sewanee.edu/offices/university-offices/support-sewanee/).
An online Guestbook is available at: www.crawfordservices.com.
