Beauty

     Beauty.  Her picture is on the cover of the Chicago Tribune Magazine dated January 7, 2007, with the title, "Fighting Words...Award-winning journalist Beauty Turner writes with passion-and first-hand knowledge-about the exiles from CHA's vanishing high-rises".  It took me a while to read the whole article, because it was longer (and I'm a single mom), but after I read it, I knew I needed to contact her.
     The picture on the cover is a stark contrast.  Beauty's on the left, in the light, highlighting the warmth of her skin with the contrasting grey of the background that was reality.  It was powerful.  The photographer did a great job.  Beauty lived and worked with the poor people of the Robert Taylor Homes.  As the buildings on Federal Street in Chicago closed, Beauty became what she called "a voice for the voiceless". 
     Some of Beauty's story was published in the article from the magazine, "The Beauty Treatment", by Don Terry.  Above the listing in the index of the same magazine, dated 01/07/07, there is a quote from Ms. Turner, "A closed mouth doesn't get fed".  I am fortunate enough to have heard her voice on a few occasions, and I can "hear" her saying it.  
     Beauty called just about everyone "love".  If she liked you, she called you "love".  The article states, "...She survived all that and then some to become an award-winning journalist and tireless community crusader who calls almost everyone 'love'.  It's her way of spreading some of the precious stuff around.  If she doesn't call you 'love,' chances are you're a politician, a bureaucrat or a slumlord doing wrong to the poor.
     Everyone else gets the benefit of the doubt and a 'hey, love' from Ms. Beauty, as the guys on the corner call her."
     Beauty went around helping the poor in Chicago.  She did it, some for, as according to page 14, "...these days...it's hard to get politicians to even mumble the word 'poor'.  They will go on and on, especially at election time, about the financial squeeze on the middle class but rarely say a thing about the hammering poor people take.  The mainstream media, she adds, aren't much better." The other part of the reason she helped them is, as quoted as her words in the article, "Young women as well as elderly as well as ex-offenders and single moms who lost their children to gun violence and police brutality needed help, and for some reason they would come and tell me about it...I guess I would take the time to listen to them...plus I wasn't afraid to confront the powers that be."  
     Beauty worked as a journalist, she raised her children the best she could, and she went around helping people.  Before her death on December 18, 2008, she started a company called "Beauty's Ghetto Bus Tours".  People from all over took her tours.  Her web site still exists today, I am imagining to keep a light shining on the plight of the poor, the work that Beauty will be most remembered for.   She was 51.
     Miss Beauty had a profound influence on me.  Before I moved to Bourbonnais, here specifically, I had no idea who she was.  I was someone from the suburbs who had no idea what Beauty's life must have been like living on Federal Street in Chicago.  My parents moved away from the city in the mid-70's and I never visited that area.
     But there came a day in 2008 when I gathered the nerve to call her about a situation to ask her opinion and solicit her advice.  There she was, as big as life, really truly there, a real person who cared about poor people and I had the privilege of speaking to her in person.  She gave me  her time, a phone number, and her opinion.  She kindly even offered to come down herself.  Knowing that she didn't have a car, I told her that it wasn't necessary for her to do all that.  I reassured her that I would take her advice and she offered me encouragement.
     It was that encouragement, that connection that she so graciously gave me that empowered me to make a move and go ahead.  We emailed back and forth over that year.  A while back I realized that it had been a while since I heard from her so I went to send an email to her, asking her how she was doing and all.  I received a sad email back from her son, letting me know that she passed.
     The world has lost a beautiful person, a courageous person who inspired countless others to stand up and help someone who needs it.  She was a true Christian.  I will always be grateful for the precious time that she gave me, and the punch in the arm that I needed.  Thanks Ms. Turner.