With bagpipes & butterflies, Jane Blaffer Owen is remembered for an "authentic,abundant life"

Free-spirited Houston philanthropist Jane Blaffer Owen was remembered as a woman who lived an "authentic, abundant life" during a memorial service at St. Martin's Episcopal Church Saturday morning that combined traditional Anglican teachings with a bagpiper and butterflies.

A who's who of Houston's old guard families turned out to honor Owen, the daughter of Humble Oil (now Exxon) co-founder Robert Lee Blaffer and Sarah Campbell Blaffer, whose family founded the Texas Oil Company.

Owen died June 21 at home of congestive heart failure, surrounded by family. "For the last time, she smiled that Jane Owen grin," said her daughter Anne Owen-Pontez. "It was so appropriate for her to leave us this way."

Owen was 95.

Speakers did not dwell on her many accomplishments — the preservation of the Indiana town of New Harmony, her contributions to the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston, or her plans for a meditation garden on the UH campus — but instead focused on Owen's larger-than-life personality.

"Mother celebrated everything you could think of and some things you couldn't think of," Owen-Pontez said.

Owen's annual Easter party always started small and ended big, with so many guests that adults would delve into the Chicken McNuggets meant for the kids and, at the last minute, party planners would drop an extra 100 Easter eggs into the bushes for the hunt. Any party invaribly ended with Owen performing a free-form dance.

"It allowed her spirit to flow," Owen-Pontez said. "She had studied briefly with Martha Graham, so she took all sorts of liberties on the dance floor. Her enthusiam was infectious. Before long, everyone was dancing."

Owen surrounded herself with philosophers, artists, and theologians (she was profoundly affected by the teachings of German-American theologian Paul Tillich), and often instigated lively conversations. St. Martin's rector Russell J. Levenson, Jr., recalled that the first time he visited Owen's home for dinner, he planned to stay only for a short while.

"But then we got into a discussion of politics and religion and poetry and art and I kept saying, 'no more coffee' and 'no more dessert," he recalled. "I finally left when I was dismissed."

In describing Owen, Episcopal priest and Jungian analyst J. Pittman McGehee recalled the image of "a floppy hat, fluttering eyes and a florid smile. That says it all."

Implying that some might think Owen eccentric, he noted that word does not mean "strange," but simply means living "out of the norm."

"If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much damn room," he said, as mourners — several wearing broad-brimmed hats in tribute to Owen — laughed.

McGehee said that we can all learn from Owen because she lived an abundant life — not saving anything for later but living it now.

At the end of the service, after the congregation sang all the verses of Amazing Grace, a lone bagpiper played the tune as he walked down the aisle.

Then everyone gathered outside in front of the church, where uniformed staff held silver trays piled with triangular boxes — each holding a single butterfly. Levenson had told the audience to open the box and slowly allow each butterfly to glide away — apparently in one last tribute to Owen, a nature lover.

The day was so hot, however, the bulk of the butterflies appeared to have suffocated before being allowed to escape.

It was an irony that likely would not have been lost on Owen, who always appreciated the absurdities of life.