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Note: (St. Louis, MO) -- Eugene Edmund Brezany (AKA "Breezy"), Sr. DDS, died at the age of 94 years on Jan. 18, 2000. He was Director of the Dental Health Maintenance Organization formerly located at 7171 Delmar Boulevard in St. Louis, Missouri. As Director for more than twenty years he oversaw and participated in providing dental services to members of the Brotherhood of Firefighters and Local One of the Brotherhood Restaurant and Hotel Workers. A life-long resident of St. Louis, he was born at 17th Street and Cass Avenue on March 15, 1905 . Son of the late Austrian �migr� of Polish extraction Eugeniuz Marion Brezany, MD and Martha Rose Brezany (nee Grodzki) of Washington, Missouri, he attended Christian Brothers College High School, Central High School and the St. Louis University School of Dentistry. Breezy also served as a "bat-boy" for the St. Louis Browns and Cardinal visitors' major league baseball teams in 1918 and 1919. He was a devout parisioner at St. Ann's Catholic Church in Normandy, Missouri and long time resident of Bellerive Acres.
Crawfishing in rich unpolluted streams surrounding St. Louis was among his greatest joys. Intensely social, he organized and sponsored bowling teams, a men's corkball/pinochle league, a women's ping-pong/bowling/pinochle league He hosted monthly meetings of the DDL Club (Drinkers, Dancers and Lovers) and held annual New Year's Open House events that lasted several days each. These activities, as well as numerous impromptu events drew thousands of visitors to his North St. Louis home annually.
By the age of 22 in 1927, Breezy had graduated from St. Louis University School of Dentistry. He practiced dentistry for 66 years (longer, it is said, than any other Missouri dentist of record). He reluctantly retired from all professional activities at the age of 88 in 1993.
While pulling zillions of teeth and making nearly as many dentures, he had largely unrealized aspirations as a gentleman farmer: Breezy's land included a little cat-tail sporting lake on a few acres in the Spanish Lake section of St. Louis County. Also in addition to practicing dentistry, he had become a local movie exhibitor/entrepreneur in the late '40s and early '50s. As president of a corporation owning the World Theater in the downtown section of St. Louis, he sold the World Theater in favor of setting up the Quincy Drive-In Theater, located in West Quincy, Missouri. Between dental appointments Breezy would often drive to and from West Quincy, about 120 miles north of St. Louis; sometimes a couple times in a day.
While movies, which he selected from distributors located along Olive Avenue in St. Louis (then known locally as Film Row) were the prime attraction at these theaters, concessions provided theater patrons with various snacks: popcorn, soda, hot-dogs and candy. In addition, he provided numerous vaudeville type acts between motion picture features: table stacking acrobats, a Native American in full head dress who carved and sold souvenir arrows; extensive fireworks displays; etc. There was even an operating train giving rides to little engineers and their pint sized passengers.
Survived by loving wife, Ruby Eugenia Lee "Jeannie" Brezany (nee Hackworth), daughter Martha Rose "Breezy" Brezany, sons Eugene Edmund Brezany, Jr. and Robert Clark Brezany; grand children and great grand children. Doc Breezy will be deeply missed by all who ever knew him.
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Birth certificate signed on July 10, 1924 by his father (as attending physician and notorized in the presence of an uncle, Frank B. Grodzki, lists him as: Eugene Edmond Brezany (note spelling varies in spelling of middle name).
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