Monthly Archives: November 2009
June Schwantes at home in Harrison, AR
This is a photo of June Schwantes, who was Jean’s life companion for some 40-odd years. Jean met June in Hasty, Arkansas, which was June’s hometown. They lived together for a year in 1965 before moving to Memphis, and then eventually to Cedaredge, Colorado. June was a evangelical Christian, a RN, who became Director of Nursing at the Medical School of the University of Tennessee. She continued her nursing career for the next two decades before retiring in 1985. When I interviewed June in Harrison, Arkansas, last May, she got around slowly with a walker but was articulate, devote, cogent, with a good sense of humor. June had remarkable recall of events of the past, but like most elderly people had difficulty remembering things that happened yesterday.
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Jean Paton as Artist
As many of you know, Jean Paton was a wonderfully creative artist as well as the first adoption reformer. This rare photo of Jean, age 39, taken in 1947 in Manchester, New Hampshire, is the only one I know of that shows her working at her artistic craft. When this photo was taken, Jean was employed at the New Hampshire Children’s Aid Society. In the evenings, she took lessons in sculpture from Maria Kostyshak, “a very interesting young woman of Russian extraction, a painter herself” at the Museum School in Manchester, acting upon a suggestion from her mentor and social work teacher, Jesse Taft, who was responsible for first suggesting that Paton take up artistic endeavors. Paton ventured for the first time into bas-relief, as well as three-dimensional figures. Creating art from clay to affect adoption reform became a life-long avocation..
Jean Paton Graduates from the University of Wisconsin, cum laude, 1932
In 1928, with the financial support of her father, Jean Paton went off to the University of Wisconsin to study economics and sociology. But Jean’s scholastic difficulties followed her to the Badger University, discovering again that her inner demons prevented her from engaging in the vigorous life of the mind that professors demanded of all students. In 1929, at the end of the academic year, she traveled to Philadelphia, to work at the Children’s Aid Society in Philadelphia. This position was, in Paton’s words, “my port of entry into social work . . . after a miserable failure at college.” Jean had just turned twenty-one, and she was “utterly inadequate to the task” of functioning as a social worker. After floundering in this position for several months, Jean decided to return to the University of Wisconsin, and three years later, she received her B.A. degree cum laude. Looking back, Paton blamed the extraordinary length of time she spent at college to an unidentifiable “psychological blockage to get myself to classes,” which resulted in failing some courses.
Jean Paton at CUB conference
I traveled to Harrison, AR during the summer and interviewed Jean Paton’s life companion, June Schwantes, who is 90 years old. During my visit I stumbled on many wonderful photographs of Jean and a few of June. I will be putting some of them up on this blog soon. This particular photo of Jean is undated. If anyone recognizes the CUB conference in the photo and can date it, I would greatly appreciate it if you could get in touch with me.
The Biography of Jean Paton 