Memories of Jane Blaffer Owen (1915-2010)

by Robert Ferré

The last time I saw Jane Owen, as on numerous other occasions, I was walking down North Street in New Harmony when a golf cart pulled to a stop, driven by a woman almost completely concealed in a long cotton dress and broad-billed hat. Seeing I was someone she knew, Mrs. Owen invited me to join her for lunch at the Red Geranium Restaurant. Our conversation turned to loved ones we had lost in our lives, which happens to those who grow old. Now, Mrs. Owen herself is gone suddenly at 95 and my thoughts turn to our interactions over the years.

Her wealth was considerable, since her father and grandfather founded the companies that would become Exxon and Texaco. I don’t know the circumstances in which a young heiress met Kenneth Dale Owen, an oil geologist from New Harmony, Indiana -- a rough and tumble oil town snuggled into a bend of the Wabash River in far southwest Indiana. That was where George Rapp led the Harmonists in 1814 to build their utopian Jane Blaffer Owen (1915 - 2010) community. Ten years later, Robert Owen, a Welch industrialist, bought the entire Harmonist village to form New Harmony, a community of intellectuals, scientists, and forward thinkers. Back home, in New Lanark, Scotland, he had introduced progressive reforms in his vast weaving industry, including better housing, education, and humane conditions -- all of which gained attention when his business flourished and profits grew. Equally progressive was his eldest son, Robert Dale Owen, whose biography is quite interesting to read. He supported women’s rights and public education as well as being a strong anti-slavery influence on Abraham Lincoln. As a congressman from Indiana, he introduced the bill that established the Smithsonian Institution. His middle name came from his mother’s maiden name, Anne Caroline Dale. Clearly, his great grandson, Kenneth Dale Owen, came from excellent roots.

Honeymooning in New Harmony in 1941, Kenneth and Jane had a vision for a restored and revived New Harmony which became their joint passion for the 61 years they were married. I’m guessing that it was 1947 when they moved into House #5. Kenneth had been born in New Harmony, and previously lived in the David Dale Owen Laboratory. I have had the pleasure of staying a number of times in House #5, an original two-story Harmonist structure with two additions, a small pool, garage, and landscaping. It is filled with books and other mementos given to Mrs. Owen by those whom she has recognized and helped through the decades, from unknown artists to the archbishop of Canterbury. I was especially touched by a framed note, hand written by Mrs. Owen and dated June 15th, 1947:

“I want this house to be like my father -- sound, unpretentious, fearing only God. May it see things both as they are and as they might be. May it add in its measure, as he did so greatly in his, to the sum of human happiness, and to our understanding of the divine purpose. This, I believe, is the kind of memorial my father would like best.”

How prophetic her words now seem, describing not the house, but her own life. Her mother, Sarah Campbell Blaffer was the closest Texas could come to royalty. I decided to learn more about her father, Robert E. Lee Blaffer. In the process, I learned that Mrs. Owen’s sister married a french marquis, and later was neighbor and friend to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in New York. One of her descendants, interviewed at age 19 in New York, seems to have followed the Paris Hilton role model for aimless rich kids. When one sees the wastefulness of such a lifestyle, one appreciates even more the seriousness and groundedness of Mrs. Owen. She once expressed to me her dismay at the current policies of the large oil companies, which are little more than criminal enterprises. (For verification, just check the daily headlines from the Gulf.) It didn’t used to be that way, she said.

It was hard in the early years, Mrs. Owen told me, when they bought up much of New Harmony, especially along the Wabash River. It was necessary to buy two homes for each family -- first paying for the oil workers’ shanties along the river, and then for a second house into which they could move. They bought many of the original Harmonist structures, as well as the old Rapp Granary (which they subsequently donated to the Rapp Owen Granary Foundation, which restored it in 1997-1999 as a public meeting venue).

I heard there was some controversy about spending $50,000 for a nine-foot grand piano for the upstairs concert space. I was attending a piano concert there in April of 2002, when someone came and spoke to Mrs. Owen (seated in the front row), upon which she left. She had been told that her husband had just died (after a prolonged illness). Born in 1903, he almost made it to the century mark. He had considerable influence in breeding horses, as well as restoring the original Robert Owen properties in New Lanark, Scotland. The continued family naming tradition is shown in the names of their two surviving daughters, Jane Dale Owen and Anne Dale Owen. There is a lovely park beside their residence in New Harmony, dedicated to Caroline Owen Coleman, their deceased daughter.

It was always impressive to hear Mrs. Owen’s vast knowledge about a wide range of subjects. When she was given the Louise du Pont Crowninshield Award last year by the National Trust for Historic preservation (who could be more deserving?), in her acceptance speech she pointed out that she had personally known the woman for whom the award is named. She built the Paul Tillich garden to honor the famous theologian, who attended the dedication in 1963. He had been a frequent visitor to New Harmony. Few people knew that Mrs. Owen had studied with him at Union Theological Seminary in New York (in addition to attending Bryn Mawr and the Washington School of Diplomacy). When Tillich died two years later, his family asked that his ashes be spread in New Harmony, which they were. Pictures of the dedication ceremony show berms with tiny little pine saplings. Today, they are towering pine trees that shade giant granite boulders with quotations from Tillich, as well as a bronze bust done by Ruediger Reitz.

Once, at dinner in the Red Geranium, I pointed out to Mrs. Owen that theologian Pierre Teillard de Chardin was buried outside the Jesuit monastery in Hide Park, New York. However, the property was subsequently bought by the Culinary Institute of America. So his remains are rather obscurely located at a cooking school. Perhaps they would enjoy a more suitable place in New Harmony. To my surprise, Mrs. Owen said, “I was contacted about that by his family. But I never knew Chardin.”

With plenty of funds, Mrs. Owen could always do things right. Architect Richard Meier designed the Atheneum (tourist center). The Roofless Church was designed by Philip Johnson, with gates and a sculpture by Jacques Lipchitz. The inscription says, in french, "Jacques Lipchitz, Jew, faithful to the religion of his ancestors, has made this Virgin to foster understanding between men on earth that the life of the spirit may prevail." Indeed, it is the spirit of New Harmony that is Mrs. Owen’s true legacy. Two other copies of the sculpture exist in France and the island of Iona.

One of the obituaries for Mrs. Owen called New Harmony the “anti-Houston.” It was there that Mrs. Owen would charge her batteries, and then go back to Houston (or Newport, Rhode Island). She said, “I’m passionate about New Harmony. I’m like a bride coming back to her beloved, each time I return.” Her goal was to preserve the buildings and history of New Harmony, as well as adding contemporary art and architecture to its patrimony.

My first introduction to Mrs. Owen was after being contacted by Karen Chadwick, then her personal secretary, in the mid-90’s. She was interested in donating a Chartres labyrinth to the commnity. Mrs. Owen paid to send me, two architects and the stone vendor to Chartres, to see the real thing. The lead architect was Kent Schuette, who teaches at Purdue and has a home in New Harmony. (The first president of Purdue University was Richard Owen, youngest son of Robert Owen, who had succeeded his older brother, David Dale Owen, as state geologist of Indiana, after which he became a professor of natural sciences at the University of Indiana, for whom Owen Hall is named.) The end result was perhaps the most beautiful (and, at $250,000, the most expensive) labyrinth in the United States, called the Cathedral Labyrinth and Sacred Garden. In 1997, François Legaux, then rector of Chartres Cathedral, came to New Harmony to dedicate the labyrinth. It was quite the social event, with many of Mrs. Owen’s Houston friends in attendance. (The fashionably dressed woman next to me at the celebratory dinner put her tiny dog up to lie on the table during the meal, only to be shushed away by Karen Chadwick.)

Mrs. Owen was raised by a French governess, spending every summer on her farm in the wine district of Charente so as to perfect her French, which was indeed excellent. Did I hear she also attended the Sorbonne? She invited the rector and me to her home for a delicious lunch, which she personally prepared.

The Labyrinth Society annual gathering will be in New Harmony this November. Perhaps at that time we can pay our respects to Mrs. Owen. She has contributed financially to various projects through the years, including the translation of the Hermann Kern compendium, Through the Labyrinth, into English.

Robert Owen, almost two centuries ago, foresaw a community that supported the arts, intellectual inquiry, and progressive social innovation. His efforts wavered, but now, thanks to Mrs. Owen, such a community exists and continues to grow, with an added spiritual component. She inherited not just wealth, but the taste for art which led to the Robert Lee Blaffer Memorial Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts , Houston, and the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston. In December, 2007, while staying in House #5, I wrote a series of poems inspired by Mrs. Owen. The final verse of one called “In Her Footsteps” goes like this:

we are all the recipients of her benefaction
for which we are most grateful
and give our thanks and recognition
but words of appreciation are not enough
providing continuity is now our responsibility
to carry forward this great work of six decades
here is grace bestowed without exception
upon all who come in appreciation of the
luminous past and the unlimited possibility
of making Robert Owen’s dream come true

The whole value of Mrs. Owen’s good example and a life well lived, dedicated to making the world a better and more beautiful place, as she had hoped in her note to her father in 1947, is for us to be inspired to carry on that work. I’ll see you in New Harmony.

Jane Blaffer Owen

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House #5

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Jane Owen and Paul Tillich

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Jane Blaffer Owen

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Cathedral Labyrinth

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Measuring the Chartres labyrinth in France

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Rector Francis Legaux at dedication