Sparkle in the world of politics

Last week’s election got me thinking about Sparkle Crowe.
If you are under a certain age, you’ve probably never heard of her.
But if you’re over a certain age and grew up in Portland, she was a formidable figure.
Sparkle, who lived on a beautiful farm near Penn-ville with her husband Gordon, was guidance counselor at Portland High School during the 1950s and 1960s.
She was also — one memorable spring — a candidate for Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction, the job Tony Bennett was booted out of on Election Day by supporters of Democrat Glenda Ritz.
Sparkle’s candidacy was an odd one.
She sought the Republican nomination at the GOP state convention on a simple but paradoxical platform. She believed the top education post in the state should be an appointed position, not a political plum.
So she was running for the job on a platform of being the last person to have to run for the job. She simply believed public education was too important to be left to politics.
Not surprisingly, that position didn’t go down very well with party leaders back in the days when political patronage was alive and well in Indiana.
The year, as I recall, was 1966. I was fresh out of high school, and my parents were good friends with Sparkle and Gordon, with whom they would argue politics for hours.
I was also friends with Sparkle’s nephew, Kevin, who was a freshman at Indiana University.
Maybe that’s why I was tapped to be a volunteer when Sparkle took her campaign to Indianapolis.
The convention was held at the old Claypool Hotel, which was pretty shopworn by then. It was torn down just a few years later.
But to a 17-year-old kid from Jay County, it was the height of sophistication. And the atmosphere was charged with political electricity.
It seemed every new conversation brought word or rumor or speculation about a new alliance or skullduggery or plot among the various factions.
The real action involved the race for Secretary of State, where an ambitious Ed Whitcomb was taking the first steps that would eventually lead him to the governor’s mansion.
There was far less glamour or buzz around the job of heading up the state’s public schools. And Sparkle’s campaign was clearly being outgunned by others with more money.
My job, as best I can describe it, was to smile. Kevin and I stayed in the hospitality room for Sparkle’s campaign, keeping watch over the refreshments and making sure they were being properly deployed.
Since we were both underage, we couldn’t serve any alcohol. But we could point delegates in the right direction, shake their hands, and grin until our cheeks hurt.
Did any of that make a difference? I doubt it.
I learned I could grin and glad-hand when the situation called for it. And I met the cute daughter of an unsuccessful candidate for Secretary of State.
But Sparkle didn’t get the nomination. Kevin went back to IU that fall. And I decided politics was one of those things that looks better from a distance than it does first-hand.

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