FACTFILE• Hometown: Grew up in Lafayette, Ga.• Something people don't know: She was once an estate liquidator and an auctioneer.• Hobby: Enjoys contra dancing.• Goal: Dreams of building a cob home. "I got to see an original replica of a Cherokee Winter house in Fayetteville, N.C., a few weeks ago. I was sold. It was so neat."
Lori Carter lives in Georgia, but she's got the Tennessee volunteer spirit.
"(I enjoy) the volunteer spirit. Tennesseeans do tend to be good volunteers," she said. "This is definitely a town that gives back a lot, and I like that. I've been volunteering since I was a child. Health and education are two of my primary concerns."
Carter has translated that passion into her work as East Tennessee coordinator for People First, a nonprofit advocacy group for the developmentally disabled.
She is the mother of six children, ages 13 to 31. Her youngest, Camilla, won a 4-H award for her presentation on the Scenic City Food Co-op, in which she and her mother participate together. The two are also master gardeners in training.
Carter combines her love of gardening and healthy eating with her desire to give a better life to those who need it. Currently, she is helping to build adaptable gardening tables to make community gardens accessible to all.
"I would love to see people with disabilities be gardening at their own homes and not just in community gardens," she said. "I'd love to see more people take responsibilities for feeding themselves and learning about where food comes from."
On the joy of food cooperatives ...
• Carter: Everybody just benefits. The prices are better and you actually can get locally grown vegetables, milk and eggs, along with honey and butter and cheese. So a lot of the stuff you would find at (organic grocery stores), you would find at a food co-op, but the prices are better."
On planting the seeds ...
• Carter: I've been interested in healthy food and gardening pretty much my whole life. But I've become very interested in the last 10 to 15 years. Some of my earliest and fondest memories were growing things. I remember having a lettuce garden when I was just a little bitty girl. Some guy came and mowed our yard and mowed all my lettuce down. It was so devastating. But, as lettuce is prone to do, it did grow back.
On working with the Scenic City Food Co-op ...
• Carter: There are a lot of other cities smaller than Chattanooga that have had food co-ops forever. It's member owned. ... Nobody makes money from it.
On educating children at home ...
• Carter: (My) older kids were primarily homeschooled the whole way. The younger ones have had a little bit of both worlds. I got into on it in the very beginning, because my (oldest) daughter is 31 years old. ... The reason I decided to do it originally was that she had dyslexia and at that time there was nothing the teachers could do in the classroom. She had a really good teacher who made the recommendation that we homeschool her for a while. Within six weeks, she was reading on a sixth-grade level. This is when she was in second grade, and we were hooked from that point on.
On putting people first ...
• Carter: People First promotes self-advocacy for folks with developmental disabilities. I love the idea of people doing things for themselves. Everybody should have the right to manage their own life. A lot of folks have been in institutions who didn't need to be and, fortunately, through People First, there have been a lot of changes in laws that have allowed people to come out of institutions to be in group homes or in their own homes. Personal choice is fundamental. I've always been for the underdog my whole life. I can remember in school seeing certain children being mistreated and feeling like it wasn't right. I wanted to do something about it.
On gardening ...
• Cater: I started to notice that in community gardens, they weren't necessarily community gardens because everybody didn't get to participate. (For) folks in wheelchairs, there's really not enough access. So that became one of my goals for People First - to see all community gardens in Hamilton County be set up so that everyone would have access. This would be through raised beds as well as table gardens, which are wheelchair accessible.
On life after personal tragedy ...
• Carter: After my son died (of an accidental prescription drug overdose) a few years ago, I reassessed everything. That's when I decided I would stop doing estate sales and go into non-profits, because it's something I'd always wanted to do. ... It's completely life changing. There's a level joy you don't ever attain again. Part of your heart's gone. It sounds cliché but it really does make you stop to think about how precious life is, how short life is, how you never know what tomorrow is and how you really just need to make sure everybody you love knows that you love them.