Lynn Clawson Trautmann

Lynn Clawson Trautmann died peacefully on 16 September 2026 at Lake Forest Hospital in Lake Bluff, Illinois, at the age of 68. Her family's obituary stated that she died after a six year battle with multiple system atrophy (MSA), a rare progressive neurological disease. The notice was submitted to the Evanston RoundTable and published through Lake County area funeral homes, including Kristan Funeral Home and Cremation Services in Mundelein, on 29 September 2026. A celebration of her life was planned for later in the fall of 2026. In lieu of flowers, the family requested donations in her memory to Defeat MSA Alliance or CurePSP, and encouraged gifts to a democracy or voting rights cause of the donor's choice.

Lynn Clawson Trautmann was born on 12 April 1958 in Chicago to Bob and Evon Clawson. She grew up in Chicago's western suburbs while her father worked two jobs to support the family. In 1976 she graduated from Immaculate Heart of Mary High School in Westchester, Illinois. She earned a bachelor's degree from Northern Illinois University in DeKalb in 1980. Against her parents' preference that she take a steadier path as a flight attendant or secretary, she accepted a full scholarship for graduate work in communication studies at the same university and completed her master's degree in 1982.

Trautmann's early career included work at Columbia Pictures and at Video Trend, a movie rental chain where she devised a system to flag inventory that needed restocking. She later helped Highland Superstores build video rental operations across the Midwest. In 1990 she moved into consulting at Hewitt Associates as a human resources training consultant and later director of HR development, then launched her own solo consulting practice.

In the early 2000s she reconnected with creative work, including music, cooking, knitting, ceramics, painting, gardening and photography. Photography became her profession after she began photographing football and baseball at Evanston Township High School, where her son Marcus played. Informal sharing with parents and students grew into paid work and the company LT Photo. She became a fixture on the sidelines at Evanston, New Trier, Glenbrook North and South, Loyola and Lake Forest, and a contributor to the Evanston Public Library and the Evanston RoundTable. After Marcus graduated from ETHS in 2014, she contacted the RoundTable and was hired as a sports photographer, staying for whole games so almost every home athlete could be pictured. She insisted she would never publish a photo that made a young person look bad. In November 2020 the RoundTable reported that she had won First Place in Spot News Photo at the 2019 Northern Illinois Newspaper Association awards for a bird's eye view of the soft opening of the Evanston Public Library branch at the Robert Crown Center, after earlier place finishes in Sports Photo. Around the same time she wound down LT Photo as pandemic assignments dried up and she relocated to Lake Bluff.

Trautmann was married to Ted Trautmann. They raised their son Marcus in Evanston and later moved to a smaller ranch style home in Lake Bluff. Music was central to her public life outside the camera. When an elderly neighbor, Verna, died in 2000, Trautmann sang and played guitar at the memorial despite never having performed publicly. That experience led her to an open mic at the Bluestone Cafe in Evanston; the organizer soon asked her to host weekly, and she built a supportive community of musicians. Friends and clients remembered her as a cook and a loyal friend who made people feel welcome. She is survived by Ted; Marcus and his wife Jeanie; older brother Brian Clawson and his wife Liz and their sons David and Matt; and younger brother Tom and his daughter Lauren. She was preceded in death by her parents, Bob and Evon, and her nephew Mike.

Trautmann's legacy rests in the tens of thousands of sports, portrait and community photographs that recorded Evanston and North Shore young people at their best, in her NINA award winning news photography for the RoundTable, and in the open mic community she hosted at the Bluestone Cafe. Former students, parents and fellow musicians remembered a photographer and host who went out of her way to include people who might otherwise have been left out of the frame. Through LT Photo and her later music nights, she left a local record of care that outlasted the business she closed around 2020.