Charlotte developer, a man of ‘deep faith,’ earned Bronze Star in Vietnam then led YMCA
George Dewey IV thought he landed his dream job for life after graduating from college in the mid-‘90s.
He sold real estate for Charlotte developer H.C. “Smoky” Bissell and worked on the first land deals for the developer’s south Charlotte community of Ballantyne, he said.
Only one man could ever lure him away, Dewey recalled telling Bissell as he announced he was leaving Bissell Cos. Inc: Dad.
Dewey’s father asked him to join the Charlotte development company he founded in 1980, Aston Properties, and Dewey immediately agreed.
George Dewey said he loved and admired his dad for his “honesty, integrity and character,” a silent leader to whom people gravitated. “He met you where you are,” Dewey said. “He never looked above you or beyond you … You always felt better after being with him.”
His father considered his best deals as those where everybody around the table left satisfied, George Dewey told The Charlotte Observer on Wednesday morning, before his dad’s funeral at Myers Park Presbyterian Church.
George Steele Dewey III, longtime developer, YMCA leader and Bronze Star recipient for valor during the Vietnam War, died on Dec. 26 after a long battle with cancer. He was 76.
Enemy fire and a helicopter crash
Born in Goldsboro, Steele Dewey served in Vietnam as a commissioned officer after graduating from The Citadel military college in Charleston, his family said. He was a member of the school’s championship wrestling team.
Under enemy fire in Vietnam, Dewey and his soldiers removed damaged tanks and trucks from “hot zones,” his son said. They also repaired all of the damaged vehicles that had been left unattended in a huge compound to make them battle-ready again.
His most harrowing moment, however, may have been stateside after returning from the war.
Steele Dewey soon founded a helicopter company called Lone Pine Helicopters. He was in one of the choppers when it crashed while helping install a pole for a ski lift at a resort in the North Carolina mountains, George Dewey said.
A second company helicopter crashed elsewhere the same week, and “Lone Pine Helicopters didn’t last very long,” George Dewey said at his father’s memorial service, drawing laughter from those in attendance. “He joked about it, but God had other plans for him.”
Career in development
Steele Dewey’s many development projects over the decades included redeveloping Eastway Crossing in the early 1990s, with Walmart founder Sam Walton attending the opening of a Walmart there.
Dewey also was instrumental in getting wine and beer sales approved “by a landslide” in the Union County town of Wesley Chapel in 2002, the Observer reported at the time.
The measure was needed for Harris Teeter to anchor what would be the town’s first shopping center, the Aston Properties-developed Village of Wesley Chapel Commons.
“I really think it says that people want to have a shopping center out there, they want a Harris Teeter out there and I think they realized that beer and wine was a necessary issue in order to have that,” Dewey told the Observer after the measure was approved.
Aston Properties also developed the Harris Teeter-anchored Colony Place at Rea and Colony roads in south Charlotte and the Publix-anchored McKee Farms shopping center on Fincher Farm Road in Matthews.
In 2008, he oversaw the $2 million refurbishment of one of Charlotte’s longest-surviving shopping centers at the time, Specialty Shops on the Park, near SouthPark mall, the Observer reported that year.
Speculation abounded at the time that the shopping center, then 29 years old, would be converted into a higher-density development.
Dewey quickly calmed those concerns, telling the Observer that his company’s vision “always was to make it more specialty with tenants either a cut above or not already in this area.”
Serving the YMCA
Serving the community was a central part of his life, his family said, including through his longtime volunteer leadership roles with the YMCA of Greater Charlotte.
He chaired the board and helped establish YMCA Camp Harrison at Herring Ridge. Children get to explore 2,000 acres of streams, trails and land between Lenoir and North Wilkesboro, 90 miles northwest of Charlotte.
Dewey chaired both Camp Thunderbird and Camp Harrison at Herring Ridge and helped lead YMCA expansion efforts, with new branches in Charlotte and Mooresville.
He received the George Williams Award and the 2007 John R. Mott Award for his YMCA service and leadership.
Such service reflected his lifelong love of the outdoors, which stepdaughter Katie Browne Beam said he spread to her and her siblings through many hikes over the years.
At Wednesday’s service, she thanked Dewey “for living your life with unwavering purpose and integrity. Simply by being you, you demonstrated to all six of us how to grow into a person of honesty and dignity, and how to be a silent leader, one who has respect for others as well as themselves.”
Everything their father did, his children said, stemmed from his deep faith in God. It was his “driving force,” they said in his obituary. He had three children and three stepchildren.
Dewey and his wife, Molly, belonged to Myers Park Presbyterian Church for more than 30 years.
Daughter Margaret “Dosty” Dewey Quarrier said her father was one of her greatest teachers. “Many times through thoughtful words and calculated conversations, but most of all through his actions,” she said.
“He lived by his word and told us our credibility is all that we have,” she told the audience. “Thank you for being my knight. I will carry on your many life lessons and do my best to pass them on to our children. I love you.”
Memorials in Steele’s memory may be made to Duke Cancer Institute for Prostate and Urologic Cancers, 300 W. Morgan St., Suite 1200, Durham, NC 27701; Myers Park Presbyterian Church, 2501 Oxford Place, Charlotte, NC 28207; and YMCA of Greater Charlotte, attn: Camper Scholarships, 400 E. Morehead St., Charlotte, NC 28202.
Condolences may be shared at www.kennethpoeservices.com.