Therese Shelton, former executive director of the Variety Club, who, together with the late Johnny Londoff Sr., raised millions of dollars for children's charities, died Monday (Sept. 6, 2010) at her home in St. Louis County.

She apparently suffered a heart attack while talking to one of Mr. Londoff's children. She was 86.

Mrs. Shelton was one of 10 children. She grew up in Arkansas, where her wealthy parents owned copper, zinc and lead mines before they went broke and ended up living on Social Security.

She moved to St. Louis and held a series of jobs at a college, a radio station and various community newspapers.

During the 1960s, she was promotions director for the old KWK radio, a rock 'n' roll station here that employed a disc jockey who went by the name of King Richard. After NBC late night host Jack Paar famously walked off the air in a snit, she came up with the idea of having King Richard go off the air and disappear.

She hid him for several days in a motel near the airport, unknown to everyone except one of her sons, who found a motel receipt at home but stayed mum when his high school classmates asked whether he knew the location of the hideout.

Years later, she went to Monte Carlo, where she met Cary Grant, who posed for a photo with her. Unfortunately, a stranger showed up posing on the other side of the famous actor. When Mrs. Shelton got home, she cut the third person out of the photo and kept the picture on her desk.

Mrs. Shelton began a longtime relationship with the Londoff family when she began ghost-writing a weekly promotional column in the old Globe-Democrat newspaper for Johnny Londoff Sr. He told her about his activities, and she wrote them up with flair.

She became the family's right-hand woman. If any of the Londoff's four children needed help with a school project, they turned to her.

So when Mr. Londoff became chairman of the Variety Club, Mrs. Shelton became executive director and executive producer of the telethon.

Mr. Londoff recruited stars for the telethon and got friends and businesspeople to give cash. Mrs. Shelton kept him and the show organized.

"They were a phenomenal one-two combination," John Londoff Jr. recalled.

When Sammy Davis Jr. ran out of his favorite cologne, it was Mrs. Shelton who hurried to Famous-Barr to get more for him.

When a child's family needed help, she made sure the Variety Club gave it to them.

"You could count on her, with all the chaos that went on," said Marci Rosenberg, a telethon producer for Mrs. Shelton.

The Londoff family never stopped turning to their friend for help. On Monday, daughter Linda Londoff was driving with her mother and called Mrs. Shelton for directions to property the family had once owned.

Linda Londoff heard her friend struggling to breathe and called 911. "She never came back," Linda Londoff recalled.

During World War II, Mrs. Shelton met her future husband, Lawrence C. Shelton, in Leavenworth, Kan. She was a onetime rich girl attending St. Mary's College, and he was a poor boy from south St. Louis doing his duty in the service. They married in 1945.

He never grew to like the music on the rock station where she worked. As a gentle dig, one of the disc jockeys, a friend, regularly played "Hats off to Larry," adding, "who I know is not listening."

Visitation is from 5 to 8 p.m. today at Kriegshauser West Mortuary, 9450 Olive Boulevard, Olivette. A funeral Mass will be celebrated at 9:30 a.m. Friday at St. John Bosco Catholic Church, 12934 Marine Avenue, Maryland Heights. Burial will be at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery.

Among the survivors are two sons, John Shelton of St. Louis County and Michael L. Shelton of Duluth, Ga.; two sisters, Rosaleen Buthod of Tulsa, Okla., and Sister Maureen Craig of Santa Monica, Calif.; two grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren. Her husband died in 1995.