8115 Market St. Ste 204
Just minutes from Wrightsville Beach
(910) 686-1869
www.GrowingGrins.com
For Jean Beasley, founder and director of the Karen Beasley
Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center and fifthyear
member of the board of directors of the International
Sea Turtle Society, it’s not just about the sea turtles
— although they’re what she’s devoted her life to — it’s
about the entire world.
“My grandmother used to find the
grain of fabric by pulling a thread out
and then it made it easier to rip right
down that weak place
where she pulled
the thread,” Beasley
explains as she sits outside
in a plastic chair
stroking Mama Kitty,
a formerly feral kitten
who’s been living at
the turtle hospital since
she was taken in by
Beasley.
“I saw her do it a
million times as a little
kid. And that’s what
we’re doing on this
planet. The fabric of life on the planet,
we are ripping those threads out and
pretty soon it could be so weak that we’ll
not be able to preserve it,” Beasley says.
Since 1958, the year North Carolina
native Beasley remembers herself as a
new bride, she’s spent every summer on
Topsail Island. Later, after retiring as an
educator and administrator for multiple
school systems, mostly in Ohio, Beasley
retreated to Surf City for good.
But during the summer of 1970,
Beasley saw something new — something
that would forever change her view
of the world, her life as a mother and her
role as an educator.
The sand was dark, barely illuminated
by the dull light of the moon. Just
beyond the stairs leading from her porch
to the sea was a relic of the past, a giant
loggerhead beginning to nest.
Beasley and her family watched, whispering
among themselves gently as to
not disturb the mammoth creature. They
watched as the mother endured the arduous
process. Using her flippers to conceal
herself with sand until she appeared at
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WBM august 2011
first glance to be a miniature dune, she
laid her eggs into a hole where her offspring
— around 100 — would incubate
safely from predators
and high tides. Then,
after a grueling hour or
two, she trailed back
into the ocean until,
like a dream, she was
gone.
“It’s one of the
miracles of life,” Beasley
recalls, “that a creature
of the ocean, a marine
animal, would do something
to carry on the
species, would subject
herself to the dangers of
coming out of her habitat — it’d be sort
of like us going to the moon — just to
lay her eggs.”
Beasley’s chance encounter roused
her and her children. The species,
part of the Cheloniidae family,
dwelled with and outlived the prehistoric
creatures of more than 100 million
years ago.
And even as little as 40 years ago,
not much was known about the marine
reptilians that spend most of their lives
under the water.
“They’re such ancient creatures,”
Beasley says. “They existed before the
age of the dinosaurs and they survived
all the cataclysmic events that changed
the planet and wiped out the dinosaurs
— they’re still with us today. I wish I
knew what it was, I wish I could bottle
it up …”
But before she furthers her reasoning
behind later efforts to conserve the sea
turtles, Beasley shrugs her shoulders.
“I’m a lover of all kinds of animals,”
she says. “I’m also an environmentalist