When Mary Neff first saw the William Reid mansion in the mid-60s, all of the Prairie Avenue millionaires were long gone. The near-south neighborhood had become a red-light district, though it was starting to turn around as R.R. Donnelley & Sons expanded, buying up vacant lots for its factories. Neff, a lawyer for the communications giant, often handled its real estate transactions.
Two years later she did. She’d had to fight with the administrator of Nedwick’s estate, but she had the backing of R.R. Donnelley, which was keen to revitalize the neighborhood. The company even surprised her with a gift of $10,000 for repairs.
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The mansion needed a fair amount of work, and Neff did most of it herself. “I have resided continuously in the Reid Mansion for 35 years, never altering its interior or exterior, but carefully and lovingly fixing the leaks, breaks, failures to operate, and dangerous conditions,” she wrote in the history. “I have joined the small company of those who value art and history beyond their own financial interests.”
Mary Vaughan Neff, who was born in 1913, grew up in Wichita, Kansas. After graduating with honors from Wichita State University in 1934, she wrote in her diary, “I don’t know what the future will hold for me, but I feel it will be generous. Also, though not good-looking, I am well set-up and am not repulsive. I have a consuming curiosity about all kinds of things…and have learned to talk persuasively and to the point.”
Lisa Baldassari met Neff in the late 80s, when she was hired to do painting at the mansion, and she, like Wyble, gradually became Neff’s friend. “She liked to read my palm when I came over,” says Baldassari, now a library archivist. “Sometimes we’d go out to dinner or to the symphony. We always went to see Yo-Yo Ma. She loved talking about her books and travels to Israel and England and National Geographic tours.” Wyble would sometimes join them, and the three came to rely on one another as if they were family. “One of us would talk to her every day,” says Baldassari.
Three days later Neff’s cleaning lady found her on the floor of her bedroom. “She’d had a stroke the night before,” says Baldassari. “We thought she’d be OK–she’d already survived breast cancer and colon cancer and took all these vitamins and assumed she knew more than all of medical science. She really did want to live forever.”
Several years earlier Neff had told Wyble and Baldassari what she wanted done with the mansion. She wanted them to sell it for a good price. She didn’t want them to let anyone even try to tear it down. And she wanted them to ask prospective buyers to please take off their shoes so they wouldn’t mar the floors. Wyble says she was a fanatic about making people take off their shoes.
