Obituary for Sharon Litwin

Sharon  Litwin
Sharon Litwin, an Englishwoman who became a force in journalism, broadcasting, culture and community activism during her half-century in New Orleans, died Friday in her Chicago apartment of complications of pancreatic cancer. She was 75.
Ms. Litwin, a New Orleans resident since 1966, was in Chicago because she was being treated at Northwestern University's Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center.
"She was as much a New Orleanian as anyone whose family has been here for five generations," said Renée Peck, a longtime friend who, with Ms. Litwin, founded NolaVie, a cultural, not-for-profit website that was launched in 2011.
Ms. Litwin not only worked with Peck to get a grant to establish the site but also wrote a weekly "culture watch" column for it and produced a weekly culture-news segment on WWNO-FM about whatever in the city appealed to her broad range of interests.
"The culture of New Orleans made her tick," said Jackie Sullivan a longtime friend who, as the museum's deputy director, worked with Ms. Litwin during her time there.
"The arts, the music, the food – everything about New Orleans was what Sharon loved, and that was the essence of her life," Sullivan said. "She just had a knack for taking a spin on something and making it great if it had something to do with the culture of this city."
Ms. Litwin's work with NolaVie capped a career that included jobs as a producer at WYES-TV, a reporter for The States-Item and The Times-Picayune, assistant director of the New Orleans Museum of Art and executive director and, then, senior vice president for external affairs of the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra.
"It's phenomenal that one person did all of this," said Bill Fagaly, who retired this year as the museum's curator of African art. "She loved this city, and I think she had an insight into how she could help this city and what she wanted to do to make this city better."
Ms. Litwin also kept busy with volunteer work, which included stints as president of the Contemporary Arts Center; the Committee of 21, which was formed to elect more women to office; Cultural Communications; and the Mental Health Association in Metropolitan New Orleans. She also was a founder of the Crescent City Farmers Market and Partnership for Action, whose accomplishments included the installation or repair of about 2,500 street lights to deter crime.
In recognition of Ms. Litwin's service, she received the Mayor's Arts Award, the YWCA and the Young Leadership Council named her a role model, and CityBusiness designated her one of its Women of the Year in 2002.
"No one asked her to do this stuff when she got off work," said Richard McCarthy IV, a founder of the farmers market. "When you look at New Orleans and the things that put a smile on your face about New Orleans expressing itself over the last 40 years, chances are she was behind it. You'd never know it because the last thing she'd want to do was broadcast that she was making something happen."
Some things were bigger than others. Early in 1995, when 22 of Claude Monet's late works went on display at the New Orleans Museum of Art while Ms. Litwin was its assistant director for development, the city went mad for Monet. Restaurants offered Monet-themed meals, and people could enjoy a sound-and-light spectacular in the Warehouse District, a puppet musical about Monet and reproductions of the impressionist master's works in chocolate. Orleans Parish Prison inmates painted murals on a railroad bridge on the edge of City Park that were inspired by Monet's paintings, and they made wooden versions of water lilies, which appear often in Monet's paintings, to adorn streetcars.
"While the big cities are too big or blasé, there's a level of creativity in this town that is wonderful," Ms. Litwin said in an interview then. "This is a party town. If you can turn it into a party, you will turn it into a party."
This all-out, unorthodox approach to promoting art worked. The two-month exhibit drew 234,524 visitors, the biggest turnout for any exhibit at the museum since the blockbuster "Treasures of Tutankhamun" show in 1977-78. Visitors spent about $25.5 million in hotels, restaurants and other outlets, according to an analysis of the exhibit's impact by the local pollster Ed Renwick.
It was, Peck said, an example of Ms. Litwin's approach to whatever she did.
"She kept putting projects together," Peck said. "She saw possibility in everything. ... She didn't think she couldn't do anything."
In addition to promoting exhibits like the Monet display, Ms. Litwin raised about $23.5 million to expand the art museum and launch the first big piece of an operating endowment, Sullivan said. At LPO, she led the musician-owned orchestra through tough times that required salary cuts for everyone, including her.
"The key to her personality was her English persistence," said John Bullard, who was Ms. Litwin's boss at the museum. "Once she committed herself to a project or an organization, she pursued her goals until she accomplished them."
But despite her habitually sunny nature, crisp English accent and ever-present smile, McCarthy said, "Sharon was someone you didn't say no to."
Sharon Norma Robinson was born on Feb. 16, 1941, in Blackpool, England, where her family had relocated because London was being bombed during the early days of World War II. Her family included actors and musicians, and her father was a member of the Worshipful Company of Tobacco Pipe Makers and Tobacco Blenders.
She graduated from Kilburn Polytechnic Institute in London with majors in French and business, and she went to work as a secretary in the BBC's North American section. She became an assistant producer who worked on segments covering South Africa and North America.
While there, she met an American surgeon, Martin Litwin, who was in England on a fellowship and had come to the studio to schedule an interview. She not only arranged the session and held the microphone but also wound up marrying him. The couple moved to Boston, where he completed his residency in Harvard-affiliated hospitals.
The Litwins moved to New Orleans in 1966 when he took a faculty post at Tulane University School of Medicine. He became the first medical director of its faculty-practice program.
The Litwins' marriage ended in divorce, and he died in 2008.
Shortly after the couple arrived in New Orleans, Ms. Litwin got a job at WYES-TV, where she worked for 10 years, producing documentaries such as "Free Men of Color" and "Gospel," as well as the series "Opportunity: A Program for Women," which was designed for women re-entering the job market.
Ms. Litwin then went to work as a reporter for The States-Item and, later, The Times-Picayune, after the newspapers merged in 1980. In an interview, she said she wrote about everything from garage sales to schizophrenia, although she said her main interests were culture and women's issues.
Even though Ms. Litwin moved on to the museum in 1985, she continued to work for the newspaper on a freelance basis, contributing frequently to the InsideOut and Living sections. Ms. Litwin also wrote for national magazines such as American Way and Travel & Leisure, and she was the New Orleans editor of the Zagat restaurant survey for more than two decades.
At the museum, colleagues said, Ms. Litwin drew on her vast network of friends throughout the city to help it develop new audiences and raise money.
"There was a Rolodex on her desk that was the size of a pumpkin. That said it all," said McCarthy, who works in New York City's borough of Brooklyn as executive director of Slow Food USA. "She connected with everybody.
"Anyone who came to New Orleans, she felt a responsibility to connect and welcome because she had made New Orleans her home and knew how difficult it was to navigate and wanted to show them how to do it. She seamlessly moved in and out of different worlds like a shaman."
Wherever Fagaly and Ms. Litwin went, he said, "I was always astonished ... that she knew everybody, and everybody knew her. She was so well-connected with the community on so many levels."
She made those connections work for her projects. For instance, McCarthy said, when he and Ms. Litwin were developing what would become the Crescent City Farmers Market, she suggested approaching the patrician W. Boatner Reily III, a former Rex and the leader of Reily Foods Co., about using his company's parking lot at Magazine and Girod streets for the Saturday morning market.
McCarthy said he had been dubious about the chances that what he described as "a ragamuffin farming organization" would get to use that space. But when Joan Coulter, a Reily colleague, approached Reily with the idea, she said this was his response: "That's a great idea. Let's do it."
The market opened there in the summer of 1995 and has developed offshoots in Uptown, Mid-City and, most recently, French Market.
Such matches were evidence of "brilliance," McCarthy said, adding: "She wasn't bound by categories. She would continually seek ways to build bridges between people who didn't know they would care about each other."
Her networks converged every December at a latke party she gave in her home to coincide with the start of Hanukkah. In addition to providing piles of potato pancakes with all the trimmings, including smoked salmon, caviar and sour cream, these gatherings let people from diverse parts of Ms. Litwin's life meet and learn about each other.
The same synergy happened with NolaVie, Sullivan said, because it let Ms. Litwin's interests – and her love for the city – show.
"The essence of that website reminded me of why we live here," Sullivan said. "This is the city she loved. She could have lived anywhere, but this was the place where she made a difference."
Survivors include two daughters, Anna-Marie Jene of San Francisco and Dr. Rebecca Litwin Newman of Glenview, Ill.; a sister, Carole Streat of London; and two grandchildren.
Family will be receiving calls of condolence at the Newman residence, 1515 Crown Lane in Glenview Monday from 4PM-9PM. Contributions in Sharon’s name to www.nolavie.com would be appreciated.
Info Mitzvah Memorial Funerals, 630-MITZVAH (630-648-9824), or www.mitzvahfunerals.com