Clara Jean Beaman Walker was the third of seven children born to Cora and Clarence Beaman in Knoxville, TN, in 1910. Considered to be “Little Mother” by her siblings, she always gave her best to her birth family and to the family she created with her husband, John Albert Walker. Three sons came from this union: Johnny, Clarence, and Henry. A teacher at heart, Jean saw each child before her and helped them navigate home economics, English, and realizing their potential.

During the Great Depression, she started her own business, Camp Chewase, a camp for young women to find out who they were in a mountain setting. Jean and John built a cabin on the border of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and used it as gateway for her dream: to help people discover and appreciate the natural world that is mother to us all. Throughout her whole life, she worked hard to make the world better: from the world of politics and advocacy for the “least of these” and for the best we might collectively achieve, to the personal where Jean would do her best to make sure visitors were fed, housed, loved. For the decade or so that Alzheimer’s worked upon her body and spirit, she never lost the drive to love the world, to love any who might need her.

The world lost her December 7, 2005, but she still lives in our memory, in the positive actions we take with our lives, and in this audiobook.