George Ann Carter Bahan, a Fort Worth philanthropist, performer, socialite, friend, mother and grandmother, died Tuesday after complications from a broken hip, according to her family.
The wife of Star-Telegram publisher Amon G. Carter Jr. and later Bill Bahan, was known in the community as someone whose musical and dance talents could change the entire mood of a party (for the better) and a woman who cared about the people around her. She was 95.
George Ann Carter Bahan was born and raised in Fort Worth, graduating from Paschal High School in 1943 and the University of Texas in 1948. She married Carter in 1953 and remained with him until his death, in 1982. In 2001, when she was 74, George Ann married Bill Bahan. They were married until his death in 2020.
George Ann Bahan was passionate about theater, music and dance, her daughter, Nenetta Carter Tatum, said Thursday. She was skilled in tap dancing, singing and playing the piano, and in 1977 made her “professional stage debut” at the Granbury Opera House with “Pal Joey,” the Star-Telegram reported at the time.
“Mother was, I guess you could say, a frustrated performer. That was until she got on that stage,” Tatum said. “But when she did, she shined. Daddy helped bus in people from Fort Worth to see her.”
As one Star-Telegram reporter put it in 1977, “if the locale was Granbury, the clientele was Fort Worth.” The next year, she returned to Granbury to perform “Call Me Madam.” And from there, her family says, her career as a stage actress, dancer and singer took on a life of its own.
But Tatum said one of Bahan’s favorite performances was her annual act of leading Christmas carols at the Exchange Club’s annual holiday party alongside stock broker Sam Berry, who died in 2012.
The proudest part of Bahan’s life, though, was family. Tatum said her mother loved her children and grandchildren more than anything else. She remembered a time when the family went on a trip to Washington, D.C.
One of Bahan’s grandchildren (who called Bahan “Mama”) had a fractured ankle, meaning she had to wear a boot on her foot for the whole trip. So Bahan hired a limousine to drive them around, so her granddaughter didn’t have to walk.
“The kids I think gave her a hard time about it,” Tatum said. “Now they look back and they’ll say, ‘I wish we could do that again. That was really nice of Mama to do that.’ ”
She also did things like take Tatum and the grandchildren to Disneyland and then from there to Seattle via a train in 1988. Any opportunity she had to create memories for her family, she took it.
When in 1952 Bahan, a recent college graduate working at a bank as a teller, asked for some time away from work to spend with her then-boyfriend Amon G. Carter Jr., her boss said no. So Bahan quit her job.
Nothing was going to keep her from spending time with the people she loved.
Tatum recalled that her mother, a very practical and down-to-earth woman, had a great sense of humor.
Tatum and Bahan shared a Jan. 2 birthday, and when Tatum was 6 she told her mother she thought all little girls had the same birthday as their mother. She says Bahan thought that was adorably hilarious.
She was also a supporter of Texas Wesleyan University.
“George Ann was a longtime friend and supporter of Texas Wesleyan University,” said Texas Wesleyan President Frederick G. Slabach. “She was a leader in our community, and we will miss her guidance and commitment to our students and their success.”
Visitation will be from 4 to 6 p.m. Monday in the Great Room at Robertson Mueller Harper funeral home. A celebration of life service will be at 1 p.m. Tuesday in the sanctuary of First United Methodist Church of Fort Worth, at 800 W. Fifth St., with a reception to follow at the church’s Wesley Hall.
Bahan will be buried in a private ceremony at Greenwood Memorial Park next to Amon G. Carter Jr. and their son George Carter. She is survived by her son Amon G. Carter III and daughter, Nenetta Carter Tatum.
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