When Jean Ford learned that she had terminal cancer she was, typically, in the middle of a hundred projects. “I was told that I’ve got a good six months,” she says. “I looked at my calendar and marked the things I absolutely have to do. My nature is that I would not want to leave things undone. So I’ve crossed a lot off my list.”“I guess that I’m not afraid,” she says. “When you get to be my age you start thinking about death. I believe that my soul will go on in some form. It is something you have to face alone. But I don’t know what you can do about it.”

Environmentalist, women’s historian, politician, photographer, negotiator, tour guide, teacher, mother, role model. Jean Ford is many things to many people. She is a true Nevadan, a person so in love with the state and its people she gives them everything she has. “I can clearly say the state of Nevada is my community. There isn’t anyplace in the state I haven’t been. To this day I’ll go out there to Jarbidge, Panaca, Tonopah and see somebody I know.”

Jean’s halo of white hair and ready smile are familiar sights on Nevada’s byways. Pushing 70, she carries herself with a sure energy, always going somewhere, organizing something. Hazel eyes bright, she listens carefully, ready to apply herself to any problem. But these days Jean is wrapping things up, coming to terms with her many successes and some painful failures. She is reckoning the benefits of her spacious public life with the sacrifice of relationships closest to her. Readying to travel alone, Jean is turning homeward to her family.

Jean’s living room is a warm clutter. Desert landscapes make the room feel bigger than it is. Family pictures and community awards vie for space. There is an early 1960s photo of a young Jean in severe black glasses, posing with her daughters, Jan and Carla modeling home-sewn clothes. There is a close-up of Jan in her showgirl makeup. Snapshots of Carla, a doctor now, and her kids are tacked around the room. In the corner a light table glows. Jean is going through slides of her Nevada travels... Overton, Ely, the Snake Range, the Ruby Marshes.

Like most people who call Nevada home, Jean came from somewhere else. She was born in Oklahoma and grew up in Joplin, Missouri. Her early home life during the Depression was safe, adequate, though spare. Her father, a farmer-at-heart, left the land to make a living selling insurance. Jean had grandparents in Ohio and on a farm in Oklahoma. Her family traveled down Route 66 to visit them each summer. But while Jean was in fourth grade, her mother, who had been a stable influence in Jean’s early years, checked herself permanently into a mental hospital.

“I grew up pretty quick because I needed to,” she says. “I was always real task oriented. I’ve been organizing things as far back as I can remember. I don’t know how much of that was needing to step up and fill in the gap and take charge.” Girl Scouts was a major boost, encouraging Jean’s love of the outdoors and achieving. She filled a whole sash with badges for camping, bicycling, exploring and homemaking skills. Through scouting and with the Christian Youth Movement,t Jean organized interracial activities, although Joplin was still segregated. “I had a feeling that all people are friends,” she says, “and that we should find a way to get together.”

Music was a big part of Jean’s life. She played violin in the orchestra, and was in the drum and bugle corps. She sang in the school chorus, in madrigals, and in the choir of her traditional, conservative Methodist Church. She toured Oklahoma with a 17 piece all-girl band playing standards for dances.“But even though I was doing all this stuff I did not feel good about myself,” she says. “And by high school I had developed a real speech problem. I went to speech therapists and even to a psychiatrist for a while. But I basically helped myself. I learned that talking about it helps.”

Jean was outgoing and had no trouble talking with people one-on-one. In college she found a faith that suited her mixture of idealism and pragmatism. The Unitarian Fellowship preached positiveness, respect for one another, and interdependence with nature. She started a lifelong commitment. After college, Jean joined the Red Cross as a recreational director and worked in Texas and Hawaii, where she met her husband, Sam. In the early sixties, they began seeking a permanent home with a medical practice for Sam.

“Sam was offered a partnership in Las Vegas. I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding! Raise our kids in Las Vegas?’” says Jean. But armed with a map of tree-lined streets and schools, the Fords explored the town for three days, found good schools and big city jazz, and decided to stay. They took to the outdoors immediately. Every weekend they drove their VW bug to Mt. Charleston, Zion, Keyhole Canyon, Hoover Dam, and Searchlight. Before long, the southern Nevada chapter of the Sierra Club was born in Jean’s living room. Jean and her family camped and led hikes all over southern Nevada. She often took groups to Red Rock Canyon west of Las Vegas.

Jean took up a crusade to make Red Rock Canyon a park, working with a “critical mass of people who wouldn’t let go,” she says. Jean joined the League of Women Voters looking for help, saying she would write, be on committees, and talk in small groups. “But don’t ever ask me to speak in public,” she said. After years of persistent educating and politicking Red Rock National Recreation Area was established. Governor Paul Laxalt appointed Jean to the state parks commission. Suddenly she had an official nametag, and was visiting potential parks all over Nevada. She threw herself into the job, learning the system so that she could use it for what she thought was important. She and her family kept camping, at Beaver Dam, in Jarbidge, Berlin-Ichthyosaur, Wheeler Peak.

In 1970 as president of the Nevada League of Women Voters, Jean spent three months lobbying in Carson City. “We had fifty women in the lobby corps,” she says. “We had observers every day on every committee. The legislators had not been monitored much before that. They didn’t know what hit them!” Two years later Jean won a seat in the Nevada State Assembly. During her ten years in Las Vegas, she had evolved from homemaker, wife and volunteer to state legislator. Along the way she had lost her fear of public speaking, for the most part. But on the first day of the legislature, fear again reared its ugly head. “I had to answer the roll call and nothing came out,” she says. “I just about died.” Jean somehow got through that first day, but almost resigned and went home. She solved the problem by taking Valium for several weeks right before the terrifyingly formal general sessions. Jean served two terms in the assembly, leading on environmental and education issues and gaining respect statewide.

But Jean’s public life was consuming her private life. What was a very exciting and fulfilling time for Jean was a difficult time for her children. “I know now that my daughters needed me and I was not there,” she says. “Since then I’ve felt very guilty about it. But during the sixties and seventies I was learning who I was. I was growing up when they were growing up. I was driven to go into public life and they paid for it. We all paid for it to some degree.” Jean ran for Nevada State Senate in 1976 and lost. “I was devastated because I’d found a home,” she says. “I was God’s gift to the people of southern Nevada. Then I lost the election and I was nothing.”

Six months later Sam left her. “He gave me a yellow pad with eight pages of how to take care of the house,” she says. “He said everything he had was mine except the practice and then he just walked out. Went to southern California with another woman. I had thought we were secure. At one point I was suicidal. I thought, ‘I’m a failure,’ that it was all my fault, because I’d gone off on this nontraditional life of getting involved in the community.”

Jean didn’t have good friends to talk with. But with the help of her daughters she picked herself up and looked for the opportunity that might be hidden in the bad times. She finished her masters degree in public administration, and ran again for State Senate. This time she won and served a term before moving permanently to Carson City, where she worked in state government and taught women’s studies at the University of Nevada, Reno.

In recent years she has been the mover behind the Nevada Women’s History Project. “I was amazed at how empowered the students’ were by reading women’s oral histories,” she says. “It made people feel that they could be agents of change too.” She led women’s tours into the Nevada outback, and began collecting the papers of League of Women Voters chapters in small towns in rural Nevada. “It just spiraled, the classes, the tours, celebrating the history of the League and suffrage,” she says. Under Jean’s inspiration, people across the state began doing oral histories with women in their communities.

Learning she had terminal cancer slowed Jean down only a little. She seems to have more energy than most healthy people. Facing death, she displays the same dignity and spirit that pulled her through the hard times of her life. But her illness has been devastating to the many people who feel a part of her and who look to her for strength. And dying has become a project all its own.

Jean’s capable and loving support network has kicked in in full force, coordinating food and rides. Her front door revolves with visitors and deliveries. People are helping relieve her of files and photos. Her calendar is loaded with tours, receptions, and people wanting quality time. “All these people are calling me now,” she says. “And there have been big parties. It’s a little much I think. But everyone wants to get together.” In the process Jean’s family has had to fight against being frozen out again. Though Jan and Carla have taken time from jobs and families to be with Jean, they have to squeeze time from her public commitments.

At recent tributes bursting with politicos and admirers, Jean’s role as a family woman has almost always been omitted from the story of her public life. Jean is grateful for the help and accolades, but in her remaining time she is most resolute about reclaiming her family life.

“The one thing I feel the least good about is my relationship with my daughters,” she says.” We have a deep foundation and we’re going to build more. That’s a high priority. But even now they’re having to share me with all these other people. It’s like deja vu. I just can’t let that happen.”

Finally, however, it seems that a marriage has taken place between Jean’s public and private lives. Through force of will Jean has prevailed at pulling her family closer. During their frequent visits she brings Carla or Jan or granddaughter Haley on errands about town, on road trips, to functions and visiting friends. And she carefully guards part of her time for them alone, hiking, talking, and together retracing the road map of Jean Ford’s remarkable life.