The world’s greatest mom works right here at SMU. Baking cookies, coaching softball, serving as a Girl Scout leader, teaching Sunday school and even born on Mother’s Day, Gwen Beauchamp, an information support specialist in the Cox School of Business, has done it all.
Tucked away in the basement of the Maguire building working literally out of a closet, all of her hard work and extra overtime mom hours are about to be recognized. Beauchamp is on the verge of being vindicated as “America’s Favorite Mom.”
Beauchamp’s high-flying story began earlier this week when she participated in the Pillsbury bake-off here in Dallas, competing for the $1 million prize. She was unable to take home the grand prize, as she was surpassed by mere peanut butter cookies, but she did take home the title of “America’s Favorite Recipe” and a cash prize of $5,000 for her toffee-banana brownie dish.
However, this was only the beginning, as later in the week she learned that she had been selected as a semi-finalist in the “America’s Favorite Mom” competition. There are over 11,000 moms in the competition, and the selection committee has chosen Beauchamp as one of the top 15 favorite moms in America. The committee selected her through reading a nomination essay written by her children and viewing her family videos.
The experience of winning America’s favorite recipe and the nomination for favorite mom in the same week was mildly overwhelming for Beauchamp.
“Both of these events are once in a lifetime, and in the same week? This is just not happening for me, I can’t believe it,” Beauchamp said.
Meeting all of the basic mom requirements, such as getting kids to sporting events, working the carpool, organizing school parties as room mom, hanging pictures of her children on her cubicle wall and now being recognized as winning America’s favorite baking recipe, it is clear that Beauchamp is qualified for the “Favorite Mom” title.
Her story as a mother, however, goes beyond all those things, according to her children’s nomination essay. Her motherhood has been marked with its fair share of adversity, and it is how she handled it that her five children, now fully grown, believe make her America’s favorite mom.
From events such as making an ambulance wait after a house fire for her husband and youngest children so the family would not be separated, disastrous floods ruining country homes, and working late and having to do the grocery shopping at midnight, Beauchamp kept on fulfilling her motherly duties to the best of her ability.
According to her children in their nomination essay, “loans [for the damaged homes] have to be paid back and other dreams had to be put on hold, [but] Mom never let it get her down.”
All of this has been recognized by the people at NBC, and she will be included in the national “America’s Favorite Mom” special in the days leading up to Mother’s Day. A film crew filmed her and her family and conducted interviews at her house on Friday. The interviews and home videos of her family will appear on national television in the four days prior to Mother’s Day, by which time she could potentially be selected as the winner on the prime-time show on Mother’s Day hosted by Donny and Marie Osmond.
Beauchamp attributed her success as a mother while balancing a career to time management.
“It all comes down to time, you’ve got to plan ahead. My memory is very bad and I would keep a very detailed calendar of who had to be where [and] when so we would never miss a softball game or meeting. With kids going everywhere, I had to keep up,” Beauchamp said.
Beauchamp is currently fourth in the semi-finals for the title of America’s Favorite Mom” in the online voting. To vote for Beauchamp, visit americasfavoritemom.com. Voting ends April 25. Look for her family video to appear on the today show on NBC in the four days leading up to Mother’s Day.
