I was shocked to read in today’s obituaries about the passing of Fifi Wiedeman, a former Kansas City school board member and a well-known Brookside area resident.
I only knew Fifi in passing — I would see her walking on the trolley trail occasionally — and by a Visitation Church connection. For decades, a group called Theatre at Vis has staged a musical production at Visitation every summer. Our daughter Brooks and our son Charlie participated in a few of those, as did one of Fifi and Reeves Wiedeman’s children, Sam.
Fifi and Reeves, who is co-founder of the Helix Architecture firm, are best known in Brookside for saving The Dime Store when they purchased it in 2007, after the longtime owner had died. They operated it for three years before selling. Had Fifi and Reeves not bought the store — with its old, familiar, creaking, wood floor — it might have passed from the scene as a Brookside landmark.
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The opening sentence of the obituary captured Fifi’s essence and how I — and many others — remember her:
“Felicity “Fifi” Bliss Wiedeman, 63, died on Sunday, April 5th. She brought a tremendous energy, passion and enthusiasm to her life that exceeded her tiny frame.”
Her loss is particularly sad and upsetting because she died by suicide. I applaud and admire Reeves and the other family members, including their three grown children, for hitting the suicide issue head on.
Here’s what the obit says about that…
Fifi struggled for many years with severe depression, an illness that afflicts more Americans every year than cancer. She put up a brave fight, seeking medical treatment while trying to lead a full life like the one she always had: volunteering at NourishKC community kitchen; joining a singing group called The Noteables; and continuing to nurture her adult children. She relied more and more on the strength and optimism of her husband, as well as her children and sisters, but the disease eventually became too difficult to bear. The fact that she died by suicide shows the terrible force of this illness.
It takes tremendous courage and honesty to put something like that in the newspaper, and the Wiedemans have both.
Anyone who has struggled with depression knows how debilitating it is. It descends and envelops as a suffocating cloud of hollowness, helplessness and anguish. I can tell you from experience — now behind me, thank God — that, when you’re in the thick of it, it’s hard to envision how you’re going to get from this time today to this time tomorrow.
As they did with me, antidepressants often enable sufferers to turn the corner and recover…but they don’t always work. For some people, there’s little or no relief.
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Despite her struggle with depression, Fifi achieved a lot, besides raising three children.
She was elected to the school board in 1998 and resigned in August 2000. It was a particularly difficult period for the school board. In the wake of a 1977 desegregation lawsuit, the district spent $2 billion building new facilities and trying to attract white students, only to have the Missouri Board of Education strip KCSD of its accreditation in May 2000. It was also the time when a wave of charter schools was opening and the district was losing tons of students.
In an August 2000 story in The Pitch, Fifi said she was driven to resign mainly because she saw racial and political polarization on the board taking precedence over a commitment to children’s education.
“I believe massive change is needed,” she was quoted as saying, “and it’s not just physical change, it’s not just systemic change, it’s emotional change — you’ve got to have unconditional love for the kids in these schools.”
A year after leaving the school board, Fifi became a sales person and buyer for Brookside Toy & Science, a few doors west of The Dime Store on 63rd Street. She worked at the toy and science store for three years, and then, in 2007, she and Reeves bought The Dime Store and renamed it The New Dime Store.
I remember going in there one day soon after they had bought it, and she and Reeves were behind the front counter, smiling and checking out customers.
I believe the last job she held was in seasonal sales at Pryde’s Old Westport, where she worked for five months in 2014.
I hadn’t seen Fifi in recent years. They must have been difficult years. My deepest condolences go out to Reeves, their three children and Fifi’s three sisters.
The family encourages donations in Fifi’s memory to NourishKC.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
I appreciate how you have written this. Thanks very much.
Thank you, Vern. This is a painful loss for our city and particularly for the Brookside area.
Suicide leaves more problems than it solves, questions that are never answered. Fifi has been at so many of Kansas City’s unique places, I surely have been in her presence, probably more than once. None of us escape feelings of depression, there is a hymn that gives listeners something to think about. How does it go . . . . in the bulb there is a flower, in the seed an apple tree . . . . there’s a dawn in every darkness. . .in the cold and snow of winter there’s a spring that waits to be . . . I’ll remember the rest. Jim, you and Fifi’s family are brave to share this with your readers.
No bravery here, Peg — all with the family…But thanks for your message of hope. Sometimes, though, it’s impossible to see the flower, the tree or the dawn, just the darkness.
Thank you for this moving remembrance of a woman who clearly made the world a better place. I did not know her but as a native Brooksider I deeply resonate with and appreciate her dedication.
She and her husband are Brookside saints for saving the Dime Store. I first shopped there with my mother when I was a kindergartener at Border Star School, in 1947. Whenever I visit Kansas City I stick my head in and buy some item, just to help keep the great spirit of this store alive. It has always been a place of rare integrity.
Speaking of Border Star, did you know it is named for a newspaper that was published in Westport for a only a couple of years years after the Civil War? The issues can be explored in The Missouri Valley Room at the Public Library. The writing turned out to be much more literate than I’d expected, but I was deeply disappointed by its segregationist politics.
I’ve lived near Border Star for half a century and never realized that school was named after a newspaper. Never thought about the name Border Star…You can almost always count on a longtime journalist (like you) to offer a tidbit of new information!
Good story, Jim
Thanks to a fine, former St. Louis Post-Dispatch editor.
You’re good. A good journalist.
What a great tribute. I know someone who has tried to commit suicide several times. She suffers severe depression and is a beautiful, intelligent and successful woman like Fifi was. The hardest moment in my life was when I was one of group of friends staying with her after an attempt and she was just coming out and asking me what she had to live for and how to go on. I don’t know where my words came from, but between treatment and my words, I am grateful that she is still here 10 years later. Depression is such a daily burden it is hard for those of us that do not have it to understand it.
I was just thinking about Fifi and Reeves and my thinking is much as you wrote. Thanks.
Wonderful article. She was a joy to know and work for. She will be greatly missed.
When I worked there she was struggling with Graves disease. Do you think that had something to do with her depression?
Never the less I will pray for her family to get through this. I had a brother who commited suicide in 2013. It’s terrible.
It is pretty common to see in some of the old newspapers from the late 1800s and on into the early 1900s, suicides reported as such right there in either the headline, the story, or both, but at some point things began to change and the word basically became taboo. Anymore, he or she “died at home” is a euphemism for what really happened – suicide. This family is to be commended for openly discussing the subject and for not holding anything back. Love the newspaper history, Tom Stites.