Hunt, Swanee

Swanee Grace Hunt was born May 1, 1950 in Dallas, Texas, the youngest of four children born to the oil tycoon H.L. Hunt and Ruth Ray. However, not until her father's first wife died did Swanee Hunt's parents marry in 1957 and it was only then that she and her siblings moved into the Hunt mansion, built to resemble its namesake, Mount Vernon. This unusual early childhood and her mother's profoundly fundamentalist faith had a lasting impact on Swanee Hunt's world view. While she had hoped to attend college in the east, her ultra-conservative father refused so Swanee Hunt began college in her hometown at Southern Methodist University. At the age of twenty, she married Mark Meeks, a seminary student, and moved to Fort Worth where she graduated from Texas Christian University in 1972 with a degree in philosophy. A year later, the couple moved to Heidelberg,Germany where Meeks served as pastor for an English-speaking Baptist church. Although she was able to complete a master's degree in counseling, this was a difficult time for Hunt who was unhappy in her marriage and unsure what direction she should take in life. In 1977, the couple returned to the US, settling in Denver where Hunt entered the Iliff School of Theology where she earned a Master's degree in Religion (1979) and a doctorate in Theology (1986). Despite ongoing marital problems, Swanee Hunt gave birth to daughter Lillian in 1982; however, the marriage soon ended. In 1985 she married Charles Ansbacher, a symphonic conductor and divorced father of a teenage son, Henry. In 1987, amidst a growing number of professional responsibilities, Swanee gave birth to Theodore Ansbacher-Hunt.

After her father's death in 1974, Swanee Hunt had a sizable personal fortune at her disposal and throughout the 1970s, she weighed various options of how she could put some of her wealth to good use, creating positive and sustainable social change at the grassroots level. She had long been concerned about mental health issues, education and women's empowerment. Thus, in 1981, the Hunt Alternatives Fund was founded in Denver. According to their Web site, "Hunt Alternatives brings daring goals, distinctive perspectives, innovative practices, and extraordinary talent to some of the world's most complex and injurious challenges...and has contributed more than $100 million to social change through a blend of grantmaking and operating programs." In 1986, Hunt was a co-founder of the Women's Fund of Colorado which she also led for its first six years. More recently, in 2006, with her sister, Helen LaKelly Hunt, Swanee Hunt created Women Moving Millions, an organization designed to encourage women to give large gifts to support programing directed to empower other women, nationally and globally. In honor of her late husband, Charles Ansbacher, who died in 2010, she founded the Free for All Concert Fund which provides free arts programming in the city of Boston.

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