At 17, Howard Dean Clouse Jr. hung out with people his family called “Jesus Freaks”—cool, bearded Brothers and long-haired Sisters who found converts in Central Florida’s forgiving climate. His mother worried when she found him engaged in conversation with two brothers wearing white robes in the kitchen of the family home in Lake Smyrna one afternoon. Her son, whom everyone called “Junior,” sometimes traveled with the Brothers, but he always came home. By the late 1970s, the powerful Jesus People movement, which made the 1971 cover of Time with its beachside baptisms and chanting crowds, had already begun to lose its allure.
By 1979, Dean, too, had drifted away—he fell in love.
Her name was Tina Linn. Tina was only 15, but the couple immediately shared close connections. Dean’s sister was dating Tina’s brother, and would later marry. Her dad died when she was young and so did Dean’s. A surviving snapshot shows them together on the hood of a car, each with an arm wrapped around the other. Together they face into the wind wearing white t-shirts and matching smiles.
