Jean Beasley, who turned her young daughter’s dying wish into a mission to save sea turtles, has died

On the beaches of Topsail Island in North Carolina, the sight of a sea turtle crawling ashore has long signaled both urgency and hope. For many years, a woman with a clipboard and a watchful eye was often there to note every track and nest. What brought her there was grief. In 1991 her daughter, Karen, died of leukemia at the age of 29. She had made a final request of her mother that was simple and precise: “Do something good for sea turtles.” It was a young woman’s hope that the creatures she had come to love would somehow be cared for. The family had shared many late nights walking those beaches together, looking after nests and guiding hatchlings toward the water. After Karen’s death, Jean Beasley returned to that work not as a hobby but as a promise. She never framed it as sacrifice. “