For all the tributes that poured in during the Lioness of the Bar celebration, Carrie Brown Stefaniak saved one of her most personal acknowledgments for later. In an email written after the event, she reflected on the people who have shaped her life the most – her siblings – including her sister, whom she called her “earliest mentor.”
During her teenage years, Stefaniak said, her sister was already grown and living in another state, but the two maintained a connection that proved formative. They talked on the phone for hours about everything happening in Stefaniak’s young life.
If she reached her sister’s answering machine, she would leave half-hour messages until cut off – and then call back to continue. Her sister, she said, not only returned the calls but listened to every word.
Those long-distance conversations became an early form of mentorship – an example of patience, attention and care that would later define Stefaniak’s own relationships as a teacher, attorney and law clerk. Just as her sister once made time to listen, colleagues now describe Stefaniak as the one who always finds the time for others.
Today, Stefaniak says her connection with both her sister and brother remains constant.
“They’re still and always just on the other side of a text or call,” she wrote.
If Stefaniak had chosen an object from her office to represent them both during her award remarks, she added, it would have been her cellphone – the symbol of the connection that’s never closed.