Jane Elizabeth ‘Libby’ Follette

Jane Elizabeth “Libby” Follette, age 75, passed away peacefully July 23, 2023, after a long battle with Parkinson’s Disease.

She is preceded in death by her parents, Silas Adam and Matilda Jane Stephenson; as well as her two brothers, Sonny Stephenson and John Chris Stephenson.

Libby was born December 13, 1947, in Ruston. She graduated from Ruston High School in 1965. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Louisiana Tech University, in 1971. After graduating, Libby worked as an artist and designer in her early life living in New Orleans, Wichita, Kansas, and Chicago. She moved back to Ruston in the early 1980s to join the family business, Stephenson’s Lumber. From 1989 through 1994, Libby operated Southern Interiors until she joined her husband Kent at Follette Pottery. Anyone who knew Libby knew she was the better half of a dynamic duo made up of her and Kent Follette, her husband of 54 years. Kent and Libby met at Louisiana Tech and quickly married in 1969. From the first day they met, the two were inseparable companions, partners in crime, and undeniably, actively, in love with each other.

Libby was a loving mother to her two children, daughter Laura Follette Bourgeois, and son Andy Follette, mother-in-law to Robby Bourgeois, and to her great joy, the grandmother to Turner Bourgeois.

The family is holding a small, private memorial in Prairieville. In lieu of flowers, Libby asks that friends make a donation to the Michael J. Fox Parkinson foundation to help raise awareness and find a cure to the disease that she fought with grace and tenacity to the very end.