National mother values all children
E-mail story
It's easy. Send a link to the story you were just reading to a friend. Just fill out the form on this page and we'll send it along.
Your name and e-mail address are transmitted to the recipient. Otherwise, it is considered private information; see Privacy policy.
In the mining community of Kettleman City in the San Joaquin Valley, a young woman fresh from Brigham Young University was teaching elementary school children. It was the mid 1950s, and 22-year-old Helen Christensen was teaching children from Mexico whose parents worked in the cotton fields of central California.
"I just loved those little kids," a now-72-year-old Helen Christensen Bean related. "They were so humble. Some didn't speak English and I didn't speak Spanish."
So they learned together. The young teacher taught the children English, and they taught her how special every child is. She especially remembers one child, 6-year-old Fernando. He was very bright, she recalls, and very independent. "Sometimes he didn't want to do what I wanted him to do. So we had discussions on how we do what the teacher wants."
The slim, blonde teacher and the little Spanish-speaking boy had more than elementary discussions, however. Every afternoon, she would sit by her little friend on the curb in the sun while waiting for the school bus. And they talked. "He told me things that were going on in his life," she said. "I think I reached him. We had a special bond. He'd tell me about his family."
The little boy had a speech disorder, and by talking with his teacher, he learned to speak English well. "He learned to trust me. I loved him. He was a sweet little guy."
Today, Sister Bean of the Newell Creek Ward, Oregon City Oregon Stake, thinks often of that little boy. And as the 2005 National Mother of the Year, she speaks of Fernando in relation to the value of all children and the influence of mothers worldwide. This former teacher of children was named National Mother of the Year April 30 during the American Mothers National Convention in Houston, Texas. Her husband, James H. Bean, and several of their 11 children sat in the audience.
"Very humble, inadequate" was how she described her reaction to this honor. "I'm hoping to be able to teach some of the young mothers who live around the country and recognize their importance and validate motherhood."
She most certainly validates her own mother, who died in 1967. Sister Bean, the former president of American Mothers Inc. in Oregon and a former member of the American Mothers national board, was born in Fairview, Utah, to Elery and Gladys Christensen. She remembers life on a farm with parents who never struck her. "My folks never raised their voices to me, they were so gentle.
"My first memory," she added, "is of my dad teaching me to pray."
Then, when she was 16, her father had a heart attack and died. "I was devastated. We had a farm, and my mother took over the farm and we all tried to help."
Her older brother came home to help, while Helen helped with household chores with her 15-year-old sister and 8-year-old brother. "We lived off the farm. We had cows and chickens and pigs. That's how we ate, by growing our own vegetables and our own meat.
"That's what really molded me, because I didn't quit, you didn't quit and you didn't get discouraged. You just went on."
The Christensens continued on the strength of the gospel and on the strength of their mother. "She was faithful, 100 percent, never wavered," Sister Bean said, in describing her mother's faith and Church activity. She recalls how every year, without fail, her mother paid tithing when she sold the cattle.
"I had a great childhood. I was sorry that my children didn't have that kind of environment," Sister Bean.
Whether on a farm or not, however, Sister Bean has sought throughout her life to establish a gospel environment for her family. She met her husband while she worked in a school district in Salinas, Calif., and they were married in the Manti Utah Temple on June 20, 1958. Today, they have 11 children: Jeff (Jill) Bean, Charlotte (Ronald) Laughlin, Kathy (Tracy) Walker, John (Jody) Bean, Donald (Louise) Bean, Greg (Debbie) Bean, Alison (Karl) Kovac, Jodi (Marshall) Clark, Spencer (Estrellita) Bean, and Michael Bean. One daughter, Barbara, died in 1963 when she was 3 months old of a congenital heart defect. The Beans have 39 grandchildren.
Sister Bean knows the pain a mother's heart can hold. Along with losing a baby daughter, she and her husband have known the realization that one child was different than the others. And they have known the boundless love that one child brought to their home. Michael, now 28, has Down syndrome.
"All our children are better people because of him and they accept other people better because of him. His challenges have become their challenges," she said.
"I think that every person who has a child with disabilities has to come to grips and make their own peace. It can't come from somebody else," Sister Bean said when asked what counsel she would have for other mothers of children with disabilities.
But to all mothers, she says, "If you've done the best you know how, then that's all the Lord asks and after that we're at the mercy of agency. One of the things I tell my kids is, 'I can't take credit when you do things right, but I refuse to take credit for the things you do wrong."
E-mail: julied@desnews.com
