Luna Hattaway

Luna Hattaway wasn’t so much a school teacher as she was a teacher of children. For more than 35 years, Mrs. Hattaway, who died February 9th, just 14 days shy of her 102nd birthday, taught in the Ouachita Parish school system. In her self-contained classrooms, she used the arts to convey her lessons to fourth, fifth, and sixth graders in ways more memorable than any textbook. Each child, Mrs. Hattaway understood, had his or her own learning style. For a struggling student, painting a mural could convey the arc of history; learning to line dance could channel the basics of math.

Mrs. Hattaway, an artist in her own right, studied painting and then taught her students making sure there was always painting time in her classroom.

In addition to painting on canvas, she was also an accomplished china painter, using her own kiln to make dinnerware. After retiring from teaching in the 1980s, she received a book on Faberge eggs as a gift. Fascinated by the craft, she began painting greenware eggs in her own delicate patterns and for more than a dozen years gave them to her sons Robert and Jon for Easter.

Mrs. Hattaway was an avid gardener whose horticultural skills extended to hybridizing day lilies. She was also a talented quilter, sewer, and cook.

Luna (Coates) Hattaway was born in Columbia, LA, to Lee Mecom and Iva Kelly Coates. One of four children, she was predeceased by her sisters Violet Hobgood and Mable Fleming, and their brother Albert. Her husband Aubrey Jarriel Hattaway, to whom she was happily married for 56 years, died in 1992. She studied at Louisiana Polytechnic Institute and completed her bachelor’s degree in education at Northeast Louisiana State College, now the University of Louisiana at Monroe. She made her home in West Monroe and attended the First United Methodist Church of West Monroe, where she also taught Sunday school.

In addition to Robert and his wife Sue (Johnson Womack) and Jon and his late husband Martin Potter, her family includes her grandchildren Melissa Eads and her husband James, great grandchildren Kaitlyn Eads and Rachel Eads Bonner, and her husband Ethan, and great great grandson Abbott Bonner.

Funeral services will be held at 2:00 P.M., Monday, February 12, 2018, at First United Methodist Church, 1411 Glenwood Drive, West Monroe, LA, with Rev. Jon Tellifero officiating. Interment will follow in Hasley Cemetery in West Monroe, LA, under the direction of Mulhearn Funeral Home, West Monroe.

Visitation will be held from 12:30 P.M. until service time on Monday at the church.

Pallbearers will be Chris Kitchens, Bill Hunt, Warren Perkins, Matthew Tellifero, Paul Hobgood, James Fleming and Drew Kennedy.

Memorials may be made to First United Methodist Church in West Monroe.