A eulogy for the one-of-a-kind Shifra Stein

I used to call Shifra Stein my “foul-weather friend.” Unlike the fair-weather type, who never seem to be around or helpful when times are tough, Shifra was the perfect person to call when I was depressed or having a personal crisis. She would patiently listen to me whine or cry or gnash my teeth and then offer, in her brutally candid manner, some brilliant solution or a different perspective on the problem that hadn’t occurred to me.

But her greatest gift to me was her extraordinary sense of humor. She was one of the funniest, wittiest people I’ve ever known. Walt Bodine and I still crack up, recalling her greatest line as a restaurant reviewer: “The meal was as delicious coming back up as it was going down.”

“She was one of a kind, with an amazingly quick sense of humor,” Bodine says.

Shifra Stein died on Thursday, May 29, at age 67, after a brief but intense battle with cancer. Initially stunned by the news, I was able to keep from crying by recalling all the happy times I had shared with Shifra and her husband, Bob. They were great friends to dine out with, because they immediately noticed every offbeat detail at a restaurant. Shifra had been a restaurant reviewer at The Kansas City Star and was proud that she had really been tough on several iconic restaurants in town. She told me, “If you can’t be completely honest about your subject, it’s not worth writing about.”

She never took herself too seriously. One of my favorite stories was her reaction to a review that ran in the old Squire’s Other Paper, under the headline “Shitra Stein’s View of Restaurants.”

“Shitra?” she said and laughed. “Tom Leathers couldn’t afford a copy editor?”

Shifra was a true renaissance woman. In addition to being a terrific writer, she was a gifted painter, gardener, lecturer and teacher. “She had so much talent and charisma,” her friend Karen Adler remembers. Charisma is exactly the right word: Shifra was a vital, commanding personality.

She once confided to me that there had been some reluctance to hire her to join the Star‘s all-male entertainment staff. “The editor told me that the men in the office liked to swear,” Shifra said. “I told him, ‘That’s bullshit. Just hire me.’ And I got the job.”

Let’s all raise a glass to Shifra’s memory.