W. Feliciana consumer advocate dies at 94
H. Anne Plettinger, a West Feliciana Parish native who worked on the top-secret Manhattan Project and later championed transparency in Louisiana government, died Thursday morning at a Zachary nursing home.
She was 94.
Plettinger had been in ill health for about a year.
Funeral arrangements are incomplete at Rabenhorst Funeral Home in Baton Rouge.
She is survived by two nieces, a nephew and grandnieces and grandnephews.
Plettinger was a 1939 graduate of Sophie Newcomb College in New Orleans who began working at the University of Chicago’s Metallurgy Lab in 1943 on a project she understood to be important to the war effort.
The work, led by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Enrico Fermi, turned out to part of the effort by the United States to develop the atomic bomb.
Plettinger remained at the university for 30 years as a technical specialist in the physics division of the Argonne National Lab and returned to Louisiana in 1974.
Plettinger’s interest in local and state government and public utility affairs began shortly after her return to Louisiana, when hearings began on Gulf State’s Utilities Co.’s plans to build the River Bend nuclear power plant near St. Francisville.
She regularly attended West Feliciana Parish Police Jury meetings, and began attending Louisiana Public Service Commission meetings after her questions about the nuclear plant were too technical for local police jurors, according to a citation read when the West Feliciana Civic Club gave her its Citizen of the Year award in 1996.
Plettinger was known as a consumer advocate who wanted the public included during governmental decision-making processes.
“Looking out for the common good initially earned the approbation of the uninformed, the suspicion and mistrust of those upon whom her sharp, informed glance fell, and the undying gratitude of the beneficiaries of her actions across the entire state,” the Civic Club’s citation said.
In addition to her work as an unpaid watchdog for the public, Plettinger was interested in photography and historical preservation.
Her photos of West Feliciana Parish plantations were featured in an exhibit at the Chicago Public Library.