July 4, 2019 618 PM
Lonn Wood Taylor, 79, died suddenly at his home in Fort Davis on Wednesday, June 26.
Although he was a fifth-generation Texan, Lonn was born in Spartanburg, South Carolina on January 22, 1940, the son of Alonzo Clason Taylor and Virginia Wood Taylor. His paternal grandparents moved to Fort Worth, Texas in 1904 and his father grew up there; his mother was born in Jacksboro, Texas. Taylor always thought of himself as a Texan and of Fort Worth as his home town.
He grew up in Manila, Philippines, where his father was an advisor to the Philippine government on highway planning and construction, and in Fort Worth, where his family moved in 1956. He attended the American School of Manila from the third through tenth grade and graduated from R.L. Paschal High School in Fort Worth. In 1961, he received a B.A. in history and government from Texas Christian University, where he was a member of the debate team.
Taylor was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at New York University in 1961-1962, but he dropped out of graduate school to return to Texas and participate in politics. He worked on Don Yarborough’s 1962 campaign for governor and Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 campaign for President. He was executive secretary of the Young Democratic Clubs of Texas from 1964 to 1966. He was a liberal Democrat and always voted the Democratic ticket.
In 1966, Taylor joined the staff of HemisFair 68, the San Antonio World’s Fair, as a theme-development writer; that experience led to a long and satisfying career in the museum world. After a stint as an editor with the Texas State Historical Association (1968-1970), Taylor served as curator and later director of the University of Texas’s Winedale Historical Center at Round Top Texas (1970-1977), as curator of history at the Dallas Historical Society (1977-1979), as director of the New Mexico Furniture History Project, Deputy Director of the Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe (1980-1984) and as Assistant Director and Historian at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. (1984-2002). Taylor was also the guest curator of the exhibit “The American Cowboy” at the Library of Congress, which was opened by President Ronald Reagan in 1983 and toured museums in the United States and Canada.
Taylor was the author of numerous books and articles on the history of American decorative arts, architecture and material culture including
Texas Furniture: The Cabinetmakers and Their Work, 1840-1880, with David Warren, The American Cowboy (with Ingrid Maar) and The Star-Spangled Banner.
Taylor’s articles appeared in The Texas Observer, The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Texas Monthly, Texas Co-op Power, Antique Magazine and White House History, among other journals. He taught as an adjunct professor at the University of Texas at Austin, George Washington University and as a visiting professor at Colorado College.
Taylor retired in 2002, and he and his wife, Dedie, moved from Washington, D.C. to Fort Davis, Texas. In retirement Taylor wrote a weekly column, “The Rambling Boy,” for Marfa’s Big Bend Sentinel and had a weekly radio show on Marfa Public Radio. He published four books of essays based on his columns. He served on the advisory board of the Sul Ross State University Center for Big Bend Studies, on the board of the Friends of Fort Davis National Historic Site, on the Standing Committee of the Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande and on the Jeff Davis Historical Commission.
Taylor was a fellow of the Texas State Historical Association and a member of the Philosophical Society of Texas, The Texas Institute of Letters, the Sons of the Republic of Texas, the Round Top Rifle Association and St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Marfa.
Taylor Married Edith (Dedie) Uunila in Washington, D.C. on May 7, 1988. They met in the elevator of their Washington apartment building on Thanksgiving Day of 1984. His earlier marriages to Mary Lou Mueller of Fort Worth and Diane Greene of Lytle, Texas ended in divorce. When he and Uunila married, he told his friends that it was her first marriage and his last one.
Memorial contributions may be made to St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 101 East Washington Street, Marfa, Texas 79843; Fort Davis Higher Education Foundation, P.O. Box 335, Fort Davis, Texas 79734.
A celebration of Lonn Taylor’s life will be held in mid-August in Marfa.
