Hug from royalty elevated 'bozo'

It was the Dunkirk High School Alumni Banquet, and I finally had a chance to tell Suzi how she’d changed my life.
Suzi was Suzi Harrison 50 years ago when the DHS class of 1965 graduated. These days, she’s Suzi Harrison Moeschl.
We didn’t know one another in high school. For starters, she was a year ahead of me, and that can pose a barrier. And on top of that, 1965 was in the pre-consolidation era, and Jay County was awash with high schools. Poling and Gov. I.P. Gray had closed their doors, but Madison was still graduating seniors, as were Bryant, Redkey, Pennville, Dunkirk and Portland.
Students might be the same age and live in the same county and never cross paths.
My path did cross with Suzi’s, but it wasn’t until 1966.
By then, she was something of a celebrity. She had gone to Indiana University after graduating from Dunkirk High, and she’d been named homecoming queen her freshman year at IU.
Then, in the spring of 1966, she’d been selected first as one of the princesses for the Indianapolis 500, then as 500 queen.
To say that Suzi was out of my league would be a colossal understatement.
But our paths crossed that spring in Indianapolis.
My high school guidance counselor, Sparkle Crowe, had launched a campaign for the Republican nomination to be superintendent of public instruction. She and her husband, Gordon, were friends of my parents. And I was friends with Sparkle’s nephew, Kevin Crowley, who lived with the Crowes for a bit and graduated from Portland High School.
So before I knew it I found myself working as a volunteer with Kevin on behalf of Sparkle at the state GOP convention in the old Claypool Hotel in Indianapolis.
Our job, as far as I could tell, was to smile and steer often-inebriated delegates into the Sparkle Crowe hospitality suite.
And it was there that I met Suzi Harrison — homecoming queen, 500 royalty — for the first time.
I’m not sure what her role was, but she was gracious enough to stop by the Sparkle Crowe campaign headquarters. She knew Kevin slightly from IU and also knew Don Hanlin, another IU student from Jay County at the time.
Normally, that would have been the end of it. You meet somebody, and you never see them again.
But later that summer, there was an event in Portland.
A group of foreign exchange students was stopping by the county for a visit. There were host families and social events.
Though I had graduated and would head to college in the fall, I was involved in the hospitality.
That’s how I came to be at some sort of farewell dinner for the visiting students at General Shanks Elementary School. Most of those on hand were still in high school, but there were a few of us who had graduated that spring.
And someone had decided that the event needed a little star power.
Suzi Harrison had been invited, though I doubt she knew what she was getting herself into.
She walked into the all-purpose room at General Shanks, radiating both celebrity and glamour. Let’s face it, she was royalty.
Then she looked around the room: Strangers, a bunch of Portland kids she didn’t know.
Until she saw me.
“Jack!” she cried, moving rapidly in my direction. We hugged like old friends, rather than a couple of kids who had met several weeks earlier.
And something happened.
My stock began to rise rapidly. All the young ladies in attendance were suddenly reconsidering that doofus from the class of ’66. Maybe I wasn’t just another bozo. If Suzi Harrison — 500 festival queen Suzi Harrison — was crying, “Hi, Jack!” and giving me a hug, maybe I deserved a second look.
So, Suzi Harrison changed my life.
I had a chance to tell her that story a couple of weeks ago and cracked her up. I also had a chance to tell her that I’d shared the story with her father, Paul Harrison, years ago. And in some ways, that was even better.