Gloria Freitas-Steidinger

Some giants come in diminutive packages. I know because I was acquainted with one.

My enduring memory of Gloria Freitas-Steidinger is from late November of 2009. I was one of a handful of volunteers who were putting together an event called ‘The Festival of Trees’ for the Massachusetts Horticultural Society.  We had shamelessly copied the idea from a town fifty miles north of Mass Hort’s headquarters at the Elm Bank estate in Wellesley. The idea was ingenious: charge people a few dollars to come in and see beautifully decorated holiday trees, then sell them what amounted to lottery tickets for the opportunity to take home their favorite one.

Gloria and Paul unload her tree in 2009

To get entries, we entreated garden clubs across the region to bring in a tree and decorate it on site. We also went to businesses and asked for money for trees we would decorate. (Because Mass Hort’s coffers were bare, the organization could not contribute its own candidates.)

Gloria had promised us a tree but, as the ‘decorating day’ was drawing to a close, she was nowhere to be seen. A few clubs had sent last-minute regrets and we were scrambling to meet our goal of 30 trees for this first-time event. Then, a horse van appeared in the driveway of the building in which the Festival would be held.  Moments later, Gloria and her husband, Paul Steidinger, unloaded a stunning, fully decorated tree.

Gloria (right) with Ann Lange at
the 2013 Festival of Trees

We gave it a place of honor. It drew a mountain of tickets, stuffed in a box at the base of the tree.

My wife, Betty, already knew Gloria from what is politely called ‘the flower show world’, but which could be more accurately described as ‘the Judges Council Mafia’. Gloria was a force within that world, as well as an extraordinarily gifted and creative designer.

I would get to know Gloria better at later editions of the Festival of Trees, but our relationship

Gloria, on a ladder, creates
a miniature landscape

blossomed when I became Chairman of Blooms at the Boston Flower and Garden Show.  Gloria entered not only the amateur floral design competitions (and routinely won not just ‘Blues’, but also ‘Tri-Colors’ indicating hers was one of the best of the hundred-plus entries for the show). She also contributed entries for the ‘Miniature Gardens’ exhibits; one of the most challenging of all flower show activities because it entails creating a horticultural landscape within a box measuring approximately three feet on a side.

Unloading Gloria's car at the Boston
Flower & Garden Show in 2012

It was a pleasure to work with Gloria – even to unload her car at the Flower Show at 5:30 a.m. One of the reasons was that Gloria was a ranconteur extraordinaire.  The story on which she could, if she chose to, dine out on forever revolved around her presence in the White House during the government shutdown of 1995. Gloria was one of about a dozen designers chosen each year to decorate the many Christmas trees that grace the White House.

When the shutdown commenced on November 14, all federal employees were sent home. Because they were volunteers, Gloria and her cadre of decorators were allowed to remain.  President Bill Clinton remained because he lived there. And, because she was a lowly unpaid intern, so did a woman by the name of Monica Lewinsky. Gloria said she saw it all, and I believe her.

When I began writing ‘Murder in Negative Space’, I knew I needed to incorporate a Gloria-type character. I did so, but I also had the opportunity to give her a shout-out. As my amateur sleuth, Liz Phillips, attempts to help out a floral designer struggling with a ‘stretch design’ (one of the more difficult ones). Liz asks if the designer remembers a famous stretch design that won a Tri-Color at a show a few years earlier – a floral design that evoked a man pulling a dog on a leash. “The one by Gloria Freitas!” the woman exclaims.

Gloria gave me a kiss when she read that book. Many people have told me she carried a copy of it in her purse to show it off.

Gloria passed away in late March, just over a month before her 92nd birthday.  Her husband, Paul, pre-deceased her by six months. She was a lovely lady. gracious and kind to all. More than that, she was a firecracker; funny, witty, and possessed of an energy few people of her age possess. Her death leaves a hole in the garden club and floral design world.