Anne Burnett Windfohr Marion, president of Burnett Ranches, LLC, which includes the Four Sixes Ranch in King County, Texas, died Tuesday, Feb. 11, in California, according to Cody Hartley, director of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which Marion founded with her husband. She was 81.
Among her other leadership positions, Marion was president of the Burnett Foundation and Burnett Companies and chair of the Burnett Oil Co. Inc., and was an influential arts patron and philanthropist.
Marion was a “passionate arts patron, determined leader, and generous philanthropist,” Hartley wrote in a statement.
Former President George W. Bush wrote in a statement that he and former first lady Laura Bush were mourning the death of their friend. He said she was “a true Texan, a great patron of the arts, a generous member of our community, and a person of elegance and strength.”
Marion was the great-granddaughter of Samuel Burk Burnett, founder of the Four Sixes Ranch. She was the daughter of Anne Burnett Tandy, whose family’s wealth created the Burnett Foundation.
Marion held a long list of honors, including the Golden Deed and Charles Goodnight awards, the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts and the American Quarter Horse Association Merle Wood Humanitarian Award. She was in the Texas Business Hall of Fame.
According to the Burnett Foundation website, Marion was educated at Briarcliff Junior College in New York; the University of Texas at Austin; and the University of Geneva in Switzerland, where she studied art history.
She assumed management of the Four Sixes in 1980. “Not since Captain Burnett founded and built the Four Sixes more than a century ago has any family member taken as much interest in the ranches as she, according to her former, longtime ranch manager, the late J.J. Gibson,” reads the Foundation website.
In 1988, Anne married John Louis Marion, honorary chair of Sotheby’s Inc. She has one daughter, Anne “Windi” Phillips Grimes, who also has one daughter, Martha Hall “Hallie” Grimes.
Marion was a director emeritus at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum and was inducted into its Hall of Great Westerners in 2009. Her honors also included the Golden Deed Honoree as selected by the Fort Worth Exchange Club, 1993; the Charles Goodnight Award, 1993; induction into the Texas Business Hall of Fame, 1996; the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts award, 1996; the American Quarter Horse Association Merle Wood Humanitarian Award, 1999; the National Golden Spur Award, 2001; the Boss of the Plains Award from the National Ranching Heritage Center, 2003; induction into the American Quarter Horse Association Hall of Fame, 2007; and induction into the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame, 2014.
“The most important thing that ever happened to me was growing up on that ranch,” Marion said, according to the website. “It kept my feet on the ground more than anything else.”
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