The first lady of Durham's arts scene for more than 50 years, Mrs. Pratt died Monday after an illness. She was 94.

"She brought beauty into everything," said Mary D.B.T. Semans, herself a patroness of the arts and former chairwoman of the Duke Endowment. "She loved Durham, it was kind of a thing with her and she was so passionate."

"Ella Fountain [the name by which she was almost universally referred] was one of those rare individuals who could charm a fox out of the henhouse," said retired journalist Bob Wilson. "And make the rascal like it."

From 1984 until her final illness, Mrs. Pratt was a volunteer executive at the Durham Arts Council, producing operas, managing the Emerging Artists grant program and generally boosting the status, visibility and quality of fine arts in town.

For 28 years previous, she was Duke University's No. 1 cultural impresario, producing and promoting and acquainting students with performers from Itzhak Perlman to Pete Seeger.

"She introduced high culture to this area," said art critic Kate Dobbs Ariail. "And just quietly worked away ... trying to do for artists in the community."

Ella Fountain was born and grew up in Greenwood, Miss., summering in the North Carolina mountains to escape the Delta heat and mosquitoes. She majored in French and English at the Mississippi State College for Women, she studied dance in New York City and went on to teach dance at colleges in Mississippi and Virginia.

She came to Durham in 1940 after marrying Duke graduate student Lanier Pratt, and promptly involved herself with the YMCA -- the only agency in town doing any kind of artistic programming at the time, she said in a 1984 interview. Her husband went on to be a classics professor and dean at Duke, but died unexpectedly in 1956 -- leaving Mrs. Pratt with two small sons and in need of a job.

The university hired her to develop arts programs for the then-new student union. She made the most of the opportunity, opening new vistas for a city best known for cigarettes and a college best known for football and experiments in mind-reading -- relying mostly on the power of her personality.

"The thing that in many ways sums her up," said Peter Coyle, coordinator on Durham's Cultural Master Plan, "was this genteel Southern lady who could be as tough as nails when she needed to be."

"You understood immediately her word was law," said Jake Phelps, retired Duke Union director.

Rock singer Jackson Browne was one who found that out. On campus for a concert, he slipped into Page Auditorium after hours to try the piano out. The next day, Phelps recalls, he met Mrs. Pratt, who told him, "Lucky for me I stayed here as late as I did. Some student came in and was banging on that piano. I told him to get out, we'd just had it tuned."

Later, Browne said, "I wasn't about to argue with her."

At least once, her passion left her open for a practical joke.

When Jim Slaughter, Duke's special-events manager, came to work at the university in 1972, he went to meet Mrs. Pratt, who had been described to him as "this really tough lady," he said. Making her acquaintance, he learned that her tradition was to have visiting pianists autograph the Page Auditorium Steinway.

A famous musician was coming to perform, and Mrs. Pratt was especially determined to have everything just right. After a thorough preparation, Slaughter reported to her: "We saw all that graffiti [on the piano] and we scrubbed and scrubbed and got it all out."

She was so upset he couldn't tell her fast enough that he was kidding.

"She was just wonderful, lovely," Slaughter said. "I'd love to see her at a party, because she loved to dance. ... They broke the mold when they made Ella Fountain."

The late Jim McIntyre and Michael Marsicano were Durham Arts Council directors after coming under Mrs. Pratt's wing as Duke undergraduates. "When a mentor and teacher as remarkable as Ella Fountain believes in you," said Marsicano, now a foundation director in Charlotte, "you develop a belief in yourself that all things are possible."

"Ella Fountain's passion was Durham's blessing."

While still working for Duke, she helped establish the Arts Council's Creative Arts in the Public Schools program and bring the American Dance Festival to Durham from New London, Conn.

"Truth was, she did some incredible things advancing the arts in this town," Coyle said.

"She'll be with us always," said Mary Semans. "When she said, 'This is what we should do,' we knew that is what we should do and most of the time we'd do it.

"One wonderful woman."