Tracy Lewis Curtis

Tracy Lewis Curtis died on January 28, 2011, after a four month ordeal fighting pancreatic cancer. She was 67. Although she was born on Coronado Island, California, on May 11, 1943, to Quentin Lewis, now deceased, and Shirley Oliver Lewis, she was raised in Amarillo, Texas. Her father and grandfather ran the Lewis Gas Marts so she inherited a love of cars. After graduating from Amarillo High School in 1961, she drove a red MG Sprite to Austin and the University of Texas. She graduated in 1965 with a degree in history and married Robert Allen White. The couple lived in Dallas and had two daughters, Elizabeth Essary White (known as Liza) and Ann Quentin White, before divorcing. Tracy moved to Austin in 1974 and worked for Texas Monthly as the first director of promotion where she met Gregory Curtis. They married in the fall of 1975 and had two children, Vivian Reed Curtis (now Potterf) and Gregory Benson Curtis, Jr. All four children live in Austin and survive her. She also has three grandchildren, Liza’s Isabella Savage and Jackson Savage, and Quentin’s Jesse Ramos. She is also survived by her mother, her husband, her sister Sally Strickland of Austin, and an extended family of many nieces, nephews, and cousins.

Tracy, above all else, was fiercely devoted to her children. Once, early in her time at Texas Monthly when Liza and Quentin were not yet in kindergarten, she appeared before her supervisor and calmly explained that she had to leave to see her girls because “They just said they didn’t believe in wishes.” For all four children for all their lives she was their best friend and confidant. And they were her best friends. She was firm but generous as they were growing up and as they matured and she saw what they had become, she never wished that they were otherwise in even the slightest detail. She was both realistic and adoring and never gave her children less than all of herself. The arrival of grandchildren opened another great fountain of devotion. Known to them as “Mimi”, she spent hours with them, teaching Isabella to sew, rooting for Jack on the soccer field, and romping or quietly reading a book with Jesse.

She was a great beauty and had a sharp, individual eye for clothes. When she entered a room, she was noticed, but without being grand or imposing or aggressive. Instead, her warmth and her fine sense of humor drew people to her and made them her friends quickly and with no apparent effort. Once in Vevey, she was invited by friends to a party in a private home. After about an hour, an imposing Swiss gentleman leaned over to her husband, not knowing who he was, and said, “Have you met that pretty American woman? She’s charming!” As a hostess she was the radiant center of any evening. Her warm welcome enveloped everyone; her cooking became a legend; and she made each guest leave happier than when he or she had arrived. Her closest friends were the members of her book club that met each month for over two decades; a dedicated Monday morning breakfast group; and a semi-secret honorary society named the Jelly Girls of Mississippi. She was a member of Kappa Alpha Theta, the Junior League, the Tuesday Club, and the Open Forum. She served on the alter guild at All Saints’ Episcopal Church and the board of St. Andrews School.

But even as she was raising her four children and smoothly running a shining, comfortable, lovely home, there was an entrepreneurial spirit inside her that yearned for expression. She founded and for several years ran a cooking school for children at a children’s bookstore. No instructor at any level has ever worked harder on lesson plans, materials, presentation, or teaching itself. The school was a splendid success in every way except financially. Later, with a partner, she founded a service that took authors on promotional tours around Austin. This company was a success and still exists, but after a year or two, rising at four in the morning in order to get an author to a television station by six had lost its charm.

Then, in the late 1990s, with her children grown and on their own, she realized the true calling that had been there for her all along. She would become an interior designer. She could have simply set up shop as a decorator, but she was determined to become a licensed, professional designer. Although she had already survived an operation for lung cancer, she bravely enrolled at Texas State for a four year undergraduate course in interior design, determinedly driving up and down IH35 each day, exasperated that the school made her take a course in Family Living – “I’ve been married twenty-five years and raised four children. What is it about family living they think I don’t know?” But in the midst of her studies, she was struck again by lung cancer and in 2003 endured a painful regime of chemo and radiation therapy that was successful. Undaunted, she continued her studies and graduated in 2004. Then she passed the demanding licensing examination that was required for her to become a member of the American Society of Interior Designers, and in time formed 3 Fold Design with a woman over thirty years younger. Clients called, she worked and worked, checks began to arrive, she won awards, her schedule was full and complicated, and she was wonderfully, deeply proud and happy.

Funeral services will be at All Saints’ Episcopal Church at 10:30, Wednesday, February 2, 2011, with a private burial to follow. Pall bearers will be Hub Bechtol, Stephen Harrigan, James Magnuson, and Lawrence Wright of Austin; William Broyles of Santa Fe, New Mexico; and Dr. John Curtis of San Raphael, California. In lieu of flowers the family suggests a donation to any of the following institutions: Christopher House Austin; The Harry Ransom Center; The Michener Center for Writers; The Norman Mailer Writers Colony; Cocker Spaniel Rescue of Austin/San Antonio.