Lu Etta Imogene Bartmess was born April 19, 1926 in Boynton, Sullivan County, Missouri. She was the youngest child of Charles Franklin Bartmess and Edna May (Grindstaff) Bartmess. She was raised in and around the northern Sullivan County towns of Boynton and Pollock and received her K-8 education in the rural schools of the area. Her parents divorced in the early 1930s, making finances difficult for Lu Etta and her mother, who retained custody. Beginning with 9th grade she attended Milan (Missouri) High School, graduating with the Class of 1944. It was there she also discovered a love of writing poetry, some of which were published works in periodicals and booklets of the 1940s. Ranking near the top of her class, some scholarships plus money from older siblings allowed her to attend the Kirksville State Teachers College during the summer of 1944. At the time, due partly to a shortage of rural teachers, the college offered a special teaching certificate with abbreviated training over two summers as opposed to a full four-year Bachelors degree. After completing her first summer Miss Bartmess returned to Pollock and taught the 1944-45 school year there. She returned to Kirksville in late spring 1945 for the second term at K.S.T.C. but found that true love was also on the course offerings. While on a movie double date with her then-boyfriend she met his best friend Richard "Dick" Stewart. For him the buxom, brown-eyed school marm with the long dark hair was love at first sight. She however at first found the non-smoking, non-drinking delivery man -- two years her junior to boot -- a bit too straight-laced. It wasn't long however til she realized what a good man he was and that they were destined to build a life together. They dated exclusively the rest of the summer of 1945 and after she returned to Sullivan County for a second year of teaching.

Lu Etta Bartmess became Lu Etta Stewart on the evening of January 12, 1946 in Kirksville. She gave up her teaching career at that point save for church Sunday school, vacation bible school, and helping her husband learn much of what he missed as a child -- he having sporadic formal schooling, taking early jobs to help his parents support the family. Over the next fifty-eight years they would indeed build a middle-class life together despite both coming from poverty and beginning married life in a converted garage. She bore four children; Vicki Ellen (1946), Ronald Paul (1949), Robert Charles (1954) and Larry Ray (1957). The Stewarts lived in Adair County for much of their married life. However in 1989 they moved to the senior citizen housing of her native Pollock. Both became very active members of the community, including efforts to establsh a community playground. Both she and her husband began to have serious health issues in the 1990s; she a heart condition and diabetes, he prostate cancer. Partly because of this the Stewarts moved back to Kirksville in 1997. After a twelve year battle, Dick Stewart succumbed to cancer on January 29, 2004. Lu Etta Stewart survived hm by a little over five years, dying of heart failure and suspected breast cancer on June 11, 2009. She was preceeded in death by her husband, daughter Vicki, grandchildren April Lea Carter (1976) and Ellis Lee Carter, Jr. (1978), her parents and all siblings.