Dr. Jean Moule is Always Seeking Her Light and Shining it on Others

by Candy Puterbaugh

The image has filled Dr. Jean Moule’s mind many times. A long path meanders through a cold, barren landscape to a cabin, a light shining in the window. As an artist, she painted that snowy scene in five different settings before her husband Robbie died three years ago.

“I didn’t know while painting that I’d go through a time of grief and loss,” she says. “That image was a metaphor for me of making it through the cold along the trail to a place of warmth.

When I lost my husband of 52 years, I couldn’t find that cabin.” The image, depicted in five watercolors, adorns the walls of Jean’s home, along with her other landscape paintings and pencil drawings. Living on four wooded acres near Stayton, the view from her window is of the mountain where Robbie worked as a forester. Now 75, she has two sons and a daughter, is Nana Jean to six grandchildren, and has just taken on five foster kittens, something she’s done twice before.

“I need something alive to take care of,” she says. “Animals bring sunshine and care into our lives.”

Jean has long looked for that light in the window. She’s dealt with racism, joblessness, and the death of her husband.

She’s saved a life, run a marathon, climbed a mountain, trudged through mud and snow, and done standup comedy.

She’s written four books, taught thousands of students, and marched in a protest that led to a night in jail. Jean and Robbie offered Christian fellowship in their home for 10 years, and she worked in a prison ministry.

“I’m scattered!” she laughs.

“I’m passionate about many things. I was diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder and I can do many things on a certain level, but if not interested, can’t focus on one thing for a long time. I can’t sit still! My feet are moving as I talk to you!”

While she may be “scattered,” her life is steeped in success.

She has degrees from three different respected colleges, including her PhD. Until retiring 10 years ago, she was an associate professor in Oregon State University’s College of Education where she designed and led an immersion program for teachers in education. She still teaches online and through the Honors College and is now leading a seminar called “A Teacher’s Journey to AntiRacism.”

“I wanted to be the first woman on the moon!” she says.

“I loved math and science in high school and got used to being one of few females in class. Race and gender made a big difference in my career path. As a woman of African descent, nursing and teaching were the main paths available to me at the time. I’ve had to fight coldness because of my skin color. I’m happier now that I went into education — I love the engagement and the constant learning.”

Jean not only works hard, she plays hard, and had plenty of play as a child. Born in South Carolina and raised in New York City and Los Angeles, she remembers riding her bike through the neighborhoods. She says she was not athletic as a child — always the last chosen for a team — but she took up skiing, became good enough to become an instructor, and volunteered with the Santiam Pass Ski Patrol.

There she received a Purple Merit Star for saving a man’s life.

At age 45, Jean took up track and field — from javelin to triple jump to steeplechase — and sometimes still enters 10 events in one meet! She ran a marathon at age 49, and 10 years ago climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro to see if she could do it.

“After Robbie died, I tried standup comedy for six months for my wellbeing, longevity, and memory,” she says. “It‘s distracting in the midst of grief and negativity to make people laugh. I’m not a funny person but I can make up jokes and try!”

Soon after, she entered the Ultimate Hawaiian Trail Run twice — the most fun but challenging event she’s ever entered. She did it because her grandson was entering, and she didn’t want to sit and watch. She mostly walked the hilly 5k, at the end sliding through water and slogging through mud.

“Robbie and I had a wonderful life together,” she says.

“Early in our marriage we couldn’t find jobs, so we gave away our possessions and lived in our Volkswagen bus for four months, then with his parents, before moving to Oregon. We backpacked a lot in the mountains, often sitting by a campfire.

The warmth of a fire is important to me — that light in the window.”

She’s found that warmth again.

“I’ve fallen madly in love with my 63-year-old, longtime friend who was our landscape designer!” she says. “I’m smitten! I’m giddy in love! Our friendship has turned romantic. It’s a shout-it from the-rooftop kind of thing.”

Jean has taken many detours from that path in her paintings.

Now she’s back sitting in the lighted window. But her feet are still moving, ready for her next step.