Katherine Baillargeon, 90; Patron Of Numerous Arts And Charities

"Oh, there's nothing to say about me," Katherine Agen Baillargeon said in early 1941. "I'm not like those women who accomplish so much and have so many interests and hobbies."

Nothing could have been further from the truth about Mrs. Baillargeon, a mother of five children, a well-known socialite and a longtime patron of Seattle arts and charities, who died Saturday.

In her lifetime, Mrs. Baillargeon, 90, helped establish the Seattle Art Museum, was a member of the National Council of the Metropolitan Opera, and served as co-chairwoman of the Met's first auditions in the Pacific Northwest. She was a trustee of the old Seattle General Hospital, a president of the Junior League, a prime supporter of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, and member of the Sunset Club, the Highlands Orthopedic Guild, the Seattle Garden Club and the Country Club of Seattle on Bainbridge Island.

During World War II, Mrs. Baillargeon was active in French War relief, and was later awarded the Medaille de la Reconnaissance Francaise by the French government. Mrs. Baillargeon also was a volunteer supervisor of the U.S. Army's Pacific Northwest interceptor command, based in the King County-City Building.

At the command center, before radar was common, volunteers took telephone calls from aircraft spotters on the coasts of Alaska, Washington and Oregon, and plotted plane movements on a large map to direct Army Air Corps interceptors if the need arose. With Japanese

forces occupying the Aleutian Islands, the idea of a Japanese air strike on Seattle in those days did not seem at all far-fetched.

Born in the house of her father, John B. Agen, at the corner of Seneca Street and Boylston Avenue on First Hill in 1901, Mrs. Baillargeon later told her own children about a Seattle that still had streets of dirt and fashionable transportation was by horse and carriage.

Mrs. Baillargeon's father came to Seattle shortly after the Great Fire of 1889. He started the Mount Vernon Milk Co. in the Skagit Valley, and soon began exporting condensed milk to the Far East and Alaska, in addition to operating the John B. Agen Co. in downtown Seattle at First Avenue and Marion Street. Later, John B. Agen sold the Mount Vernon Milk business to the Carnation Co.

Katherine Agen Baillargeon was one of three children of John Agen. She attended Forest Ridge Convent in Seattle and the Orestes Brownson School in New York.

In 1923, in a wedding matching two of Seattle's earliest families, she married Cebert Baillargeon, then the 33-year-old son of J.A. Baillargeon, a prosperous dry-goods merchant, and Abby Collins Baillargeon, the daughter of Seattle's first mayor. Both the Agen and Baillargeon families did considerable business in Alaska.

Cebert Baillargeon had just begun his own investment-banking business in Seattle with Kenelm Winslow. In 1929, the partners acquired the Seattle Trust company, which later became Seattle Trust and Savings Bank.

Earlier, Cebert Baillargeon had served as a Navy lieutenant based in London during World War I, and he was a delegate to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 as an aide to Col. Edward M. House, the personal representative of President Woodrow Wilson.

During his lifetime, Cebert Baillargeon, too, had been active in the community, serving as president of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce, the China Club, the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, and the Board of Trustees of the Lakeside School. He also served as a board member of the World Affairs Council and as a director of King Broadcasting Company. He died in 1964.

In an interview published in The Times in January 1941, Mrs. Baillargeon made the modest claim that there was "nothing to say about me." But a reporter persisted, and described her as "a serene, smiling presence - a poised personality that is at once friendly and remote.

"For Mrs. Baillargeon has that quality typical of so many famous beauties - a reserve that gives an almost mystical quality to her personality. Hers are the features and the coloring an artist immediately wants to paint," the reporter wrote. Mrs. Baillargeon's gracious qualities, wrote the reporter, were invaluable to her husband's business career.

The reporter also obtained a succinct view of raising children from Mrs. Baillargeon: "Too many parents have elaborate theories about child psychology. The important thing is for children to grow up to be self-reliant, to form their own opinions and to be good citizens."

It was Mrs. Baillargeon's work with the Seattle Art Museum that brought her the most public appreciation, helping to organize the museum with Dr. Richard E. Fuller.

In 1978, Mrs. Baillargeon was elected an honorary member of the museum's board of trustees, a position she still held at the time of her death.

Surviving are her daughters Catherine Brownell, Jane Sylvester and Patricia Baillargeon, and sons Joseph C. and Charles Baillargeon, all of Seattle; her brother, James R. Agen of La Conner; 13 grandchildren and 6 great-grandchildren.

A requiem Mass was scheduled for today at St. James Cathedral on First Hill. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests memorials be sent to the cathedral's Katherine Baillargeon Family Music Endowment Fund.