Mort Stein was born in Mt. Pleasant, Maury County, Tennessee. His family moved to Nashville around 1945. So he was reared in Nashville. Mort's father was an immigrant from Belarus who came to escape persecution in that country. His mother was born in New York, but grew up in Greenville, Mississippi. His father moved to Mt. Pleasant, Tennessee, because his sister's husband had a store there and he helped him set up a store called Steins. (His father's older brother started Stein Mart. He emigrated from Belarus also.)

Mort tells an interesting story about how his father immigrated to America. His father was a notary in Belarus. A Notary was similar to a justice of the peace in this country in Europe. An individual was attempting to escape from Russian control. Mort's grandfather developed a forged passport with Mort's father's name on it. His father had worked very hard since he was 10 years old and had saved some money. Since his name was on the passport, his father took it and ran to the United States.

Mort graduated from the old West End high school in Nashville. He went on to the University of Tennessee and graduated in 1962 with a BS degree in Electrical Engineering. He moved to California and went to work in the Aerospace industry. He started working on a Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering, but changed schools to get a degree in Public Administration. He received that degree from the University of Southern California in 1972.

Mort had a friend in Nashville who set him up with a blind date with Celia Agee when he came back for his parent's 50th anniversary. Celia was a farm girl who had grown up in Smith County and had gone to Tennessee Tech. Mort was working at the time with McDonald Douglas doing flight testing. He would fly all around the country and test the aircraft for acoustics and vibration. So he would visit with Celia when he came back to Tennessee.

. Mort and Celia married in 1969 and Celia went back with him to Southern California, where she began teaching school in Watts. When Celia started working that gave Mort the opportunity to quit work in the aerospace industry and finish up his public administration degree. Mort had gotten a part time job in the community of Inglewood on their Model Cities program. Inglewood was right under the flight path of the LA airport. So he was doing mostly acoustics work trying to control fly over noise.

Mort got a call from a friend of Celia's family telling him there was a job in Cookeville. They had already decided to come back to Tennessee. Celia was working right in middle of Watts which was a rough area for her. Mort came and worked in Cookeville on the model cities program. Although he did not have formal city planning training at USC he took courses in planning and was teaching a planning class at Tennessee Tech on a part time basis. He also obtained his certification from the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) after taking a number of planning classes around the country.

After their two boys, born in Cookeville, started school Celia stated teaching again in Smith County, her home county. Mort started consulting and teaching more classes after leaving the Model Cities Program.

He heard that there was a planning job opening in Williamson County, so he came and applied and was hired as the first full time county planner by the former County Judge, Wilburn Kelley. He served as the County Planner for several years, continuing as County Planner after Bob Ring was elected.. When Mort left the County, he started private consultation and worked for both the public and private sectors. This was in the late 80s. Banks were taking over subdivisions that had gone bust. Mort did consulting work for First Tennessee Bank and Metropolitan Federal Savings and Loan Association among others.

Mort found that it would be more profitable if he could sell the property for the banks so he studied and passed the test and started selling real estate. At first he helped some developers who had taken over failing developments and was selling houses. But after awhile he found that his real strength, or interest, was in selling land. He found land for a subdivision sold it to Paul Arnold and partnered with him and formed Trace Realty. This was about ten years ago. Trace Realty mostly sells land for residential and commercial development. Mort still does some public consulting work as the planner for the City of Forrest Hills in Davidson County.

Mort and Celia have two sons, Matt and Jake. Matt graduted from Brentwood High School. He took some college courses but went to work with a surveying company in Dickson. He and his wife, Dana, have two children, Jonah and Maura, shown in the photo on the right. Celia retired from teaching at Franklin Elementary School a few years ago and so she is able to spend a lot of quality time with the grandchildren.

Jake graduated from Franklin High School. He then got a degree from UT Martin in biology. He went on from there to get a master's degree in biology from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. He then started to work on his PhD in Vancouver BC., but he did not take the degree. Instead he came back to Tennessee and is working at Vanderbilt in their stem cell research lab.

Mort says that his main avocation is trying to promote affordable housing. He did that as the planner for Williamson County by putting an affordable housing component into their zoning ordinance. He has been on the Board of Community Housing Partnership of Williamson County (CHPWC), a private non profit organization that seeks affordable housing for Williamson County residents. He has also been working with a group of ministers to revitalize the Hard Bargain neighborhood near downtown Franklin. He has also worked with Habitat for Humanity helping them find land for their habitat homes. This avocation is where Mort spends most of his community service hours, working to help people find affordable housing. "Every community has to have a place for school teachers, firemen, officer workers, and so forth to live", he says. He also says that he likes to dabble in politics (mostly argues about it). He belongs to no other civic clubs, but is an advisor to the Board of Mount Hope Hard Bargain Redevelopment and on the board of CHPWC.

The one thing Mort wants his fellow Lions to know is that when he retires he is going to his wifes family farm in Smith County and becoming a hard apple cider producer. Hard cider is the fermented, alcoholic cider. He learned about hard cider when he was in France visiting the place his brother was killed on d-day. Celia's family has lived in Smith County for many generations. Pictured to the left are five generations of the Agee family.

Front row _ Celia's niece, Amanda Dillehay, and her daughter, Lucille Agee, Celia's grandmother, and Matt's children, Jonah & Maura Stein.

Back row - Celia's dad, Ivy Agee, brother, Dan Agee, son Jake Stein, Celia, Celia's nephew, and her son, Matt Stein.

Mort joined the Lions Club in Cookeville while he was there. The city manager had him come to make a presentation to the club and he was asked to join. He thinks that was about 1973. He came here in 1979 and just moved his membership here. He has held many offices including President. His favorite office was Tail Twister (we only charged a quarter then). For the last few years he has been the Chairman of the Lions Pride Breakfast. He says he got that job by default. He did it for only one year and it went so well that he keeps being asked to do it each year. He says the main thing is to have good workers in place. Chief among those is Sue Connor. He says the could not do it without her.

Mort is a regular attendee, and contributes much to the club. He is an excellent Lion of the Week. [Back}