“It’s the actions you take, the words you say, how you interact with each other, especially people who are different from you, that makes a difference,” Beasley said.
Beasley takes that message into her daily life. During COVID, she has baked cookies and brownies for hospital and health care workers, dropping them off to encourage front-line workers as they fought the pandemic.
Swift Creek Mill adapted her book “The Little Lion” for the stage in 2016. When the playhouse flooded last year, she helped raise money for repairs and baked batches of cookies for the donors as a simple “thank you.”
Because Beasley’s books are set in Lithuania, she often traveled to Lithuania pre-pandemic to speak about the books’ messages and to educate people about the Holocaust.
“When she travels to Lithuania, she never goes empty-handed. She fills suitcases with toys and blankets for the needy, some purchased with her own money and some donated by friends and Rotary clubs here and abroad,” her friend, Mary Ellin Arch, said via email. “She once bought a large suitcase, filled it with donation items, and then donated the suitcase to a needy family rather than bring it back empty.”
Along with the help of many Rotary Clubs, Beasley helped raise $70,000 for state-of-the-art physical therapy equipment for a Lithuanian hospital.
