Stevens has also had a third career, almost as dramatic, in politics and fund raising. Chief among his flops (he says there have been plenty) - he lists ``Colette.'' They include such celebrated plays as ``Tea and Sympathy,'' ``The Visit,'' ``Bus Stop,'' ``A Man for All Seasons,'' ``The Homecoming,'' and the musical ``Annie.'' He considers his biggest successes to be Leonard Bernstein's ``West Side Story'' and ``Ondine,'' by Jean Giradoux, his favorite playwright. He also remains a towering enigma to those who know him as not only the man who has made Kennedy Center happen but also a national real estate magnate who once owned the Empire State Building, and a producer (with his partner, Robert Whitehead, or co-producer with others) of more than 250 shows since the 1950s. Roger Lacey Stevens may be a lone skyscraper on the cultural horizon. I would say that he really is the embodiment of what a Medici would have been in our time, a patron of the arts in the very highest sense.'' I was part of the group that chose Roger to be chairman. Stern says, ``We were together at the very beginning of the National Endowment for the Arts, which Stevens founded. After the tributes, there was a little night music played by Isaac Stern, the violinist and Stevens's longtime friend and co-conspirator in the arts. And President Reagan certainly knew it when he awarded Stevens the Presidential Medal of Freedom earlier this year at a glittering gala. Kennedy must have realized that in 1961, when he made Stevens chairman of a future national cultural center. ``There wouldn't be any Kennedy Center if it weren't for Roger Stevens.'' ``The Kennedy Center is the house that Roger built,'' says his successor, Ralph Davidson, the former Time magazine publisher who moves from president to chairman of Kennedy Center in July, when Stevens retires to founder/chairman. He is a shy, unobtrusive man, despite his towering stature and blue searchlight eyes, a man who would rather stand not on stage but at the back of the hall, counting the house. Stevens taking that final bow in top hat, white tie, and tails. Roger Stevens is bowing out after nearly 17 years as chairman of the white marble performing-arts center on the Potomac. WHEN all the applauding hands are still, all the red roses thrown, all the bravos shouted, and all the encores played out, there is still one last bow to take at Kennedy Center.

State of mine curtain call song