Difference between revisions of "Jean Oliver Sartor"

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Jean Paxton Oliver Sartor (August 1, 1918 – July 29, 2007) was an artist in Shreveport, Louisiana, who was instrumental in the founding of the former R. S. Barnwell Memorial Garden and Arts Center. A frequent exhibitor in the International Society of Experimental Artists, Sartor was also a member of the Shreveport Visual Arts Hall of Fame. Prior to her death, she was recognized as a founding member of the Hoover Water Color Society and had a solo retrospective exhibit displayed at the Meadows Museum of Art^[1] at the United Methodist-affiliated Centenary College in Shreveport.^[2]

Background

A native of the capital city of Atlanta, Georgia, Sartor graduated from Sweet Briar College in Sweet Briar, near Lynchburg, Virginia. She was married for sixty-seven years to Emmett Alton Sartor, Jr. (1917–2012), a graduate of Washington and Lee University, named for George Washington and Robert E. Lee and located in Lexington, Virginia, who was a United States Army captain in World War II. Emmett Sartor subsequently became the president and chief operating officer of the C. W. Lane Company, a real estate and petroleum and natural gas firm which was founded in Shreveport by his maternal grandfather. Alton Sartor was also involved in community affairs, including the United Way. He was a Paul Harris Fellow of Rotary International and a president of the Shreveport Little Theatre. Emmett Sartor's cousin, Dayton Hollis Waller, Jr. (1925-2015), served a single term from 1968 to 1972 in the Louisiana House of Representatives. The Sartors were active in the J. S. Noel, Jr. Memorial United Methodist Church in Shreveport, which was built by his great-grandfather.^[3] Charles Lane Sartor, younger brother of E. Alton Sartor, Jr., and an officer of the C. W. Lane Company and a geologist, died in 2014.^[4]

Career

Sartor painted and gardened on twelve acres which she shared her husband. She was a chairwoman of the Holiday in Dixie Cotillion, held in Shreveport each April. She was a member of the Junior League and the Silver Rose Society. She received numerous refereed awards for her work. During World War II, while her husband was in the Army, she was employed at an ammunition plant as an artillery shell inspector. After their marriage in 1940, she moved with him to his native Shreveport.^[2]

In the early days of the Barnwell Center, which was located on the Clyde Fant Parkway until the city closed the facility it in 2014, horticulturists and artists fought for dominance. As one with an interest in both fields, Sartor nevertheless took a strong stand for the artists. Among the horticulturists was Kay Tuggle Kline (1937-2010), founder of the former Posey Mart, which operated in Shreveport until 1976. At the age of fifteen, Kline was the youngest licensed florist in the state.^[5]

In an interview with society columnist Margaret Martin of The Shreveport Times, Sartor's daughter, Elisabeth "Ibby" Harden, described her mother as "eccentric." The artist also maintained a rock garden in which she divided the "good" snakes from the "bad" snakes, and she refused to allow the killing of a "good" snake. She allowed her children to keep "unusual pets, turtles, alligators, a monkey, horned toads, guinea pigs, and mice as well as cats and dogs." But she would not permit an opossum that son, Alton Oliver Sartor, once hid in the basement. The creature damaged the air-conditioning insulation in the home.^[6]

The Sartors also had another daughter, Jean Sartor Hillman, and another son, Ryan Balfour Sartor.^[2] One of her nieces by marriage was Kate Hilburn, widow of the Louisiana journalist and professor Wiley Hilburn.

The couple died five years apart. Services for Jean Sartor were held on July 31, 2007, the day before her 89th birthday, at Noel Memorial United Methodist Church. The couple is interred at Forest Park East Cemetery on St. Vincent's Avenue in Shreveport.^[2]

References