Evelyn Frances Newman

In the 1950s, there was something odd going on at the Newman household in Clayton. A chute was hooked up to a window near the driveway that led into the basement. Every so often, a car pulled up to unload.

The goods turned out to be donated books — tons of them. Each pile needed to be sorted, priced for resale: five cents for most books, a dime for the nice ones, maybe $2 for a rare find.

“Then it got a little bit out of hand,” Andy Newman, recalling his childhood home, said of the operation. “It got very, very large. The house was always full of one project or another.”

The used book drive eventually became widely known as the Greater St. Louis Book Fair and a signature of Evelyn E. Newman, queen of the resale fundraiser.

The books supported St. Louis’ first interracial day care, but over decades of philanthropy, Mrs. Newman, a no-nonsense heiress to the now defunct Edison Brothers Stores Inc., was involved with all sorts of causes in St. Louis.

“She got things going and then she moved on to the next creative endeavor,” said Emily Pulitzer, who with Mrs. Newman and others was a founding director in 1980 of The First Street Forum, what is now Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis.

Mrs. Newman, of Clayton, died Tuesday (Sept. 1, 2015) at Barnes-Jewish Hospital after a brief illness, family said. She was 95.

She leaves behind a legacy of getting things done in the St. Louis culture and charity scene.

In 1960, she helped create a high-end used clothing store to support the Scholarship Foundation of St. Louis. Since then, ScholarShop stores in Webster Groves and Clayton generated about $23 million in interest-free loans and grants for college students, said Faith Sandler, executive director of the foundation.

“She really was the catalyst of founding the ScholarShop,” Sandler said. “It was her brainchild, her idea, her energy.”

In the 1980s, Mrs. Newman was the first executive director of Forest Park Forever, the nonprofit organization that has helped turn the park into one of the region’s biggest attractions.

“She was very, very important in our early years,” said Lesley Hoffarth, who now leads the group. “She really had attention to detail and fabulous ideas.”

One of her ideas was the Hat Luncheon, an annual fundraiser initially attended by about 200 women. Today, Hoffarth said it’s the main fundraising event for Forest Park Forever, which has grown to a $6.5 million annual operating budget and an endowment of more than $75 million.

But Mrs. Newman had a falling out with Forest Park Forever long before it got that big. She started Forest Park Conservancy, which was also aimed at fixing up the park. Mrs. Newman, who traveled extensively with family, had been inspired by a butterfly house in Thailand that she wanted to emulate in Forest Park at the Jewel Box.

“We are bursting at the seams to get started,” she told the Post-Dispatch in 1993 about the $6 million project and others.

Frustrated with lack of cooperation with the city, the Conservancy contacted former St. Louis County Executive George “Buzz” Westfall.

“It took Buzz one minute to say pick any park you want,” said Mrs. Newman’s son, Andy, who lives in Clayton.

The butterfly house ended up at Faust Park, where it remains today in Chesterfield, owned by the Missouri Botanical Garden.

Evelyn Edison Newman was born July 25, 1920, in Atlanta. Her family moved to St. Louis nine years later to be close to the country’s shoe manufacturing hub. The family business, Edison Brothers, grew into a publicly traded company that at its peak had 2,000 stores before ending in bankruptcy in 1995.

Mrs. Newman married Eric P. Newman in 1939. Eric Newman, 104, a retired lawyer for Edison Brothers Stores, is a rare coin and currency scholar and collector.

Auctions from his collection in recent years principally funded more than $60 million in donations to a foundation in the couple’s name to make grants mainly to St. Louis-based institutions.

At Washington University, the couple helped create the Eric P. Newman Education Center at the School of Medicine, several professorships, scholarship funds and the Newman Money Museum on campus.

Mrs. Newman’s body was donated to Washington University medical school. As per her request, there will be no funeral or memorial services. She had said that anyone who wanted to celebrate her life should make donations to their favorite St. Louis charities.

Aside from her husband and son, survivors include one daughter, Linda Newman Schapiro of New York; one brother, Julian Edison of Ladue; five grandchildren; and 10 great-grandchildren.