SPIRIT OF THE SUWANNEE MUSIC PARK & CAMPGROUND, LIVE OAK, FLA – A second, unique tree house with a deck and a loft overlooking the famous Suwannee River is going up at The Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park & Campground (SOSMPC) in Live Oak, Florida. 

“Miss Jean” Cornett as she’s known by thousands across the United States wanted to be among the first to stand on the floor that went in just a few days ago. She turned 86 in January, but that didn’t deter the matriarch of the Cornett family of Lexington, Kentucky and Live Oak, Florida from climbing on a lift to reach the floor on what likely will become sacred ground in the future.

A photo shows her absolute delight in looking out over the river from the tree house and seeing the achievement she had longed to see happen for many years. Miss Jean confided to a friend that two of her sons, James and Charles, did not want her to climb up onto that wooden floor of a tree house that was drawing her like a magnet.

“I went anyway,” she said to her friend just a few days later, a twinkle in her eye and satisfaction on her face.

It is the perfect description of her entire life… tell her she couldn’t do something and she would do it! A week later, Miss Jean became suddenly ill while spending her usual winter at the SOSMPC. On Feb. 6, 2015, with her loving family by her bedside, the Lord sent a regiment of angels to receive her. Her passing leaves a void in Suwannee County, Florida and Lexington, Kentucky history, and that of the bluegrass and music nation that can never be filled.

Miss Jean began standing on her own two feet early in life as the youngest sibling in her family. After graduating high school, she did the unthinkable for a woman in her day… she left home and got a college degree. Imagine that! But, Jean Cornett had only just begun.

By 2015, she and her husband Bob had become nationally known for their development of the Festival of the Bluegrass in Lexington, which celebrated its 41st anniversary in 2014. Miss Jean provided a stage for hundreds of bluegrass musicians, singers and songwriters who might not have ever had a chance to become nationally known without her kindness. In 2007, Miss Jean and Bob were honored by the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) with the Bluegrass Event of the Year Award for the 33rd Festival of the Bluegrass, and in 1998 received the IBMA Distinguished Achievement Award.

She raised six strapping boys to manhood, losing one in a tragic accident, but dealt with her grief and kept moving forward. She became a real estate entrepreneur building subdivisions in the Lexington area, molded the bluegrass festival into a national treasure in her job as Bob’s picker-upper (her way of describing husband Bob’s way of coming up with an idea and tossing it to her to carry out!), ran successful businesses, was a jack of all trades and most of all, she was a dreamer whose dreams came true.

A tireless worker, planner, financial whiz, bluegrass and gospel music lover, Miss Jean heard about a park in Live Oak, Fla. that had closed. She had the idea it would make a great music park. Not many people other than she and Bob thought it would work, but many of her bluegrass friends came to Florida and helped as Miss Jean carved out one of the best known, premier music parks in America on more than 800 acres of pines and moss-laden oaks on the banks of the Suwannee River. Today, the SOSMPC hosts nearly 700,000 guests each year… all because of Jean Cornett. Her accomplishments didn’t come easy, but she didn’t leave the work to others. Miss Jean got her hands dirty just like everyone else in building the SOSMPC.

She invited her bluegrass musician friends to head to Live Oak where famed bluegrass brothers Ralph and Carter Stanley had once lived and played every Friday night over a radio program that went out to 26 Southern states. The musician friends came, along with volunteers and bluegrass and music lovers, giving the SOSMPC the attention it needed to succeed. Much of its success, Miss Jean said, was due to those volunteers and to her late brother, Charles Carrithers, who was a benefactor of the SOSMPC and loved being part of its growth.

After leasing the park for 12 years, Miss Jean and Bob purchased the SOSMPC in 1997. Because Miss Jean had a dream and acted upon it, her pride and joy will this year celebrate 30 years of music, camping and nearly a dozen festivals each year along with weekly live musical performances.

During that 30 years, Miss Jean and Bob also began developing music programs in Kentucky so children could learn to play instruments such as fiddles, mandolins, guitars, banjos, harmonicas and other instruments used in bluegrass and other music genres. Their thoughts were to keep alive an American music tradition through America’s children. That idea spread into Kentucky elementary schools and into the SOSMPC as The Suwannee Spirit Kids Music Camp. The free camp is held four weekends each year. With about 100 kids ranging in ages from 5 to 17 attending each three-day camp, the Suwannee Spirit Kids Music Camp has become a great success!

The camp’s mission statement – “to provide positive, life-enhancing experiences for all participants in our programs for members of the surrounding community, including those less fortunate… each participant should come away with tangible evidence of having succeeded in one or more activities, as well as intangible feelings of independence, self-worth and self-confidence!”

Jean Cornett’s achievements as a woman, wife, mother, real estate developer, dreamer, planner and successful music park creator is one that books are written about, one that people reflect upon in quiet moments and one which those who had the privilege of knowing Miss Jean will cherish forever. Our loss is Heaven’s gain.

Services for Jean Cornett are in the planning stage and will be announced later.