Jean Oliver Sartor

A native 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 in Lexington, Virginia, and 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 Waller, was from 1968 to 1972 a member of 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]

Sartor painted and gardened on 12 acres (4.9 ha) that she shared her husband. She was a chairwoman of the Holiday in Dixie Cotillion and 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, 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, of Port Royal, South Carolina, 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 (1958-2020) of Murfreesboro, Tennessee,[7] and two sons, Dr. Ryan Balfour Sartor of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and Dr. Alton Oliver Sartor of New Orleans.[2]

The Sartors 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]