Jeanne Ellis(1925-2007)

Jeanne Ellis was born Jeanne E. Shaffer in 1925 in Knoxville, Tennessee. She had an early interest in music and at four years old became a radio singer for commercial programs at local stations such as WNOX and WCKY. At eleven she signed and toured with Paul Whiteman's orchestra for five years. At twelve she was cast as the young Jeanette MacDonald Mary character in La belle cabaretière (1938), where she briefly sang Shadows on the Moon. She also sang with Grace Moore on Lux Radio Theater.

She studied at various colleges and Universities and got a Ph.D. She sang, played the organ, composed songs, anthems, orchestral works, oratories, both chamber and choral music, and even one chamber opera. "Boats and Candles" and "Three Faces of Woman" are some examples. Besides performing, she also became an organist choir director and a music professor. She worked at the Performing Arts Dpt. at Huntigdon College in Montgomery, Alabama, where she spent most of her life. There she met her husband-to-be, Col. Robert Barmettler, they both shared artistic interests. They ran together the Summer Repertory Theater for several years and started the Performing Arts company and School of Fine Arts. They collaborated writing three musicals and toured as actors from 1989 to 1996. She produced a weekly radio program since 1993 entitled "Eine kleine Frauenmusik" for ten years. She was awarded for three times the Birmingham Festival of Arts Composition Award. They had five children. She died on April 9th, 2007.