Services set for Laura Von Harten, former Beaufort County Council member, who died at 54
Laura Von Harten, an outspoken free-thinker who sometimes ruffled feathers in eight years on Beaufort County Council, died at her home in Beaufort on Tuesday, Feb. 12, Beaufort County Deputy Coroner David Ott said. She was 54.
“We are sending her body for an autopsy that is going on today,” Ott said Thursday morning. “Other than that, I cannot release anything about the cause of death.”
Ott said Von Harten died about 2 a.m. and the body was found later Tuesday morning by her real estate agent.
Von Harten was elected to two terms on County Council in 2006 and 2010 from District 4 in Beaufort.
She was known as a strong defender of the environment that shaped her life, and that of her family.
“She was trained as an anthropologist, and history, culture and the environment were her passions,” said Beaufort Mayor Billy Keyserling.
“She was the daughter of a true blue native with mud between his toes, and her generation tried to formalize the environmental protection that she had seen as important all her life,” Keyserling said.
Rick Caporale, who served with Von Harten for eight years on County Council, said, “I found her to be very sweet.”
But her public persona could sometimes be edgy. She was known for making stunning statements, which led council members to call her “a living monument to free speech.”
That got national attention in 2008 when, during a committee meeting on land use by a local Catholic church, Von Harten used blunt language in tackling the pro-life position of the Catholic Church and its lack of female clergy, which she called “an affront to my dignity and all of womankind.” She later apologized.
Despite those flareups, Caporale said, Von Harten pushed for protection of Lowcountry history, culture and traditional land uses — things that a sizeable minority of people in Beaufort County supported in the face of constant growth.
Von Harten was a daughter of the late Herman “Bubba” Henry Von Harten Jr. and Patricia Butler Von Harten.
The Von Hartens have been one of Beaufort’s most notable families for generations, often associated with the water, and with civic and business leadership.
Laura Von Harten was raised on Lady’s Island and in Beaufort and grew up working in her father’s shrimping business. She documented that fading lifestyle in her writing, and in collecting oral histories. Her father did as well, publishing a memoir in 2011, “Little Geech: A Shrimper’s Story.”
Laura Von Harten was a former staffer at The Beaufort Gazette, and wrote a “My Lowcountry” column for four years in the Lowcountry Weekly, ending in 2010. She wrote a blog (laurasguide.blogspot.com) for a number of years, ending last July.
She contributed detailed information on the local shrimping industry to the 1999 “Port Royal Sound Survey” prepared by the Underwater Archaeology Division of the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of South Carolina.
Von Harten graduated from Beaufort High School in 1982. She earned a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from the University of South Carolina and a master’s degree in applied anthropology from the University of Kentucky, according to her Beaufort County Council bio on the county website.
She lost her bid for a third term on County Council to Alice Howard in 2014. At the time, Von Harten reported being an adjunct professor of anthropology at the University of South Carolina Beaufort, pianist at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Beaufort, and a freelance writer.
Her listing of past employment and volunteer work included serving on the Seasonal Farmworker Health Program Advisory Council for Beaufort-Jasper-Hampton Comprehensive Health Services; vice chairperson of the Daufuskie Island Binyah Foundation; project director for the Beaufort County Historical Society Oral History Project; and adjunct anthropology professor at Eastern Kentucky University.
She was single with no children. Survivors include her mother and three siblings.
A celebration of life will be at 3 p.m., Sunday, Feb. 17, 2019, at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Beaufort at 178 Sam’s Point Road.
This story was originally published February 14, 2019 at 9:34 AM.
