Jane Blaffer Owen: Passionate visionary for a better world
by Vicki Wolf

The first stone at the nature trails in New Harmony’s Tillich Park is engraved with the words of Lutheran theologian Paul Tillich, “Man and nature belong together in their created glory, in their tragedy, and in their salvation.” As Jane Blaffer Owen sees it, we are experiencing a tragedy of nature today. Greed and squandering of resources by leaders of the U.S. government and corporations have taken a toll on nature.

Owen has spent much of her life as a savior of nature. In New Harmony, Indiana she works to preserve nature, beauty and history, as well as provide a spiritual and intellectual refuge for artists, writers and educators. “I’m passionate about New Harmony,” Owen says. “I’m like a bride coming back to her beloved, each time I return.”

Owen, 91, has a home in Houston and is known here for her passion for the arts and her philanthropy. She is the daughter of Robert E. Lee Blaffer, one of the founders of Humble Oil and Refining Company. Owen became involved in New Harmony 65 years ago with her husband, the late Kenneth Dale Owen, who was a renowned geologist and founder of Gulf Shore Oil Company. Together they worked to preserve the history of American geology and significant landmarks in New Harmony.

As part of her efforts to preserve and protect nature in New Harmony and to demonstrate energy efficiency can be built into a beautiful home, Owen worked with Roger Rasbach, the late Houston architect, to build the House of Tomorrow – a house that reduces energy use by 50-70 percent over a conventional home.

Owen says the House of Tomorrow is environmentally-friendly with a hard shingle roof made from recycled computer cases and a floor made of recycled milk cartons. “The door is painted steel and won’t rot. No one can believe it is made of steel,” Owen says.

In working to preserve the utopian community, Owen says she needed the best advice she could get. “My wise parents taught me to seek out quality of thinking.” She quotes Thomas Hardy, novelist and poet, to explain her thoughts about politics today: “To articulate what everyone else is thinking is to be successful and will get you elected. To be in the vanguard, to be ahead of what people are thinking, is fatal politically.”

Owen says the Bush administration is busy building empires rather than providing leadership that is needed in the United States and in the world today. “Our country was a republic in Daddy’s day. Now it’s an empire,” Owen says. “Back then, companies merged out of economic necessity – to survive. What started as a republic – one spirit, one body, many limbs – now is a depersonalized empire.”

Today’s leaders of the oil industry also are falling short of providing the good stewardship that was part of the oil business in her father’s time. “Humble Oil was not what ExxonMobil is now,” she says. “They were explorers – these men explored below the surface, and oil was beneficial.”

“Like every benefit, it can turn on itself and, in time, turn on us,” Owen says. “Oil is beneficial – the greed and power that come with the production and selling of this energy source is out of hand. I was born into a conservative family,” Owen adds. “My father was treasurer of an oil company. He would be appalled at the squandering of money and resources today.”

Owen is hopeful that the work that she is doing in New Harmony can help improve education and the thinking in this country. “She looks back on the work of Robert Owen, a social reformer who instituted public education and was one of the founders of the early utopian community in New Harmony. “In the beginning, public education was pure and altruistic,” she says. “It’s as if it started like water that starts as a clear source of a stream and as it runs down stream, gets muddied up. New Harmony is a like a flow form that cleanses the water. It takes education back to a pure state.”

Owen says New Harmony is experiencing a revival with wonderful newcomers who include important writers and teachers. “I’m trying to reload the boat load of knowledge, that arrived in New Harmony in 1825 with the father of American geology, William Maclure, the first published entomologist and conchologist Thomas Say, with the first teacher of the Pestalozzi method of education.”

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