Reliving my past

Well, here’s a first crack at my "testimony" as a Believer and I just hope it's not boring--I feel it will get easier and smoother as I go on:

Starting in high school, I learned I had a knack for journalism. As part of our journalism class, some of us took a field trip to compete in an annual event at Kent State University (Kent, OH). Students from around northern Ohio watched a reenactment of the Kent State Shootings from May, 4 1970 and then wrote up our news story on a really tight deadline.

This was before computers, so it was all by hand and I remember doing lots of erasing and scratching out, feeling major pressure. Unbelievably, I won THIRD place out of all the participants, so many of them that we filled a large lecture hall!

Even with this HUGE honor, though, my heart was fully set on becoming an actress. My absolute dream was that I would go to New York City and perform in Broadway shows. I was voted president of the drama club at Loudonville High and had parts in almost all the plays we produced my junior and senior year.

Probably the biggest thing my fellow club members would recall about me is that I worshipped Doris Day and would carry cut-out photos of her from magazines with me (usually in my back pocket) whenever we had play practice. For those who don’t know, Doris was an Ohioan (born Doris Mary Ann von Kappelhoff in Cincinnati) and even portrayed a woman from Upper Sandusky, Ohio in her hit romance comedy ("Touch of Mink") she did with Cary Grant.

Everything seemed to be going my way my senior year. I was voted vice president of my class, I won a scholarship from the Rotary Club and was named Buckeye Girls’ State representative from Loudonville.  With embarrassment, I even accepted the award of Class Clown (for the girls) from my senior class.

At the end of my senior year I was actually named a finalist for Ohio in the Miss United States Teenager contest and competed in a pageant in Columbus.

From that weekend in a dorm with the other contestants, I stood out as a real ham. In fact, and this was later terribly dismaying news for my grandmother who attended the pageant along with my mother, I popped the zipper on my gown by showing off my Julie Andrews impression backstage just before the evening event. They actually had to use duct tape (which wasn’t easy to find) to make my dress presentable for my appearance on stage.

I was a huge fan of the musical “Sound of Music” and knew all the show tunes by heart, including “Climb E’vry Mountain,” in which I would belt out the deep booming voice of the Mother Abbess.

*****

For college, I chose to go to Ohio University as a theatre major. Their performing arts program had an excellent reputation and Paul Newman was touted as the school's most famous student.

Just as a quick aside, Newman (from Shaker Heights, OH) and his wife, Joanne Woodward, were regular visitors to Loudonville, staying in an old mansion near downtown that we were told was part of the Civil War’s Underground Railroad. Newman liked to race cars at tracks nearby.

Within a month of starting my freshman year I was disillusioned. My high school guidance counselor, who actually sidelined as a preacher, somehow failed to tell me that OU was among the top three party schools for the whole country, rated as such in an annual ranking by National Lampoon Magazine!

The lesser problems I encountered included official warnings about obtaining “crabs” by using the female freshman dorm’s communal bathrooms. Unbelievably, in fact, I came back to campus from going home for Thanksgiving to learn that the police had cordoned off our bathroom because a student had given birth in it (all by herself, from what I understood!).

Every Friday and Saturday night the dorm floor I was on would practically empty out due to girls attending drinking parties, etc.

I had one friend (and she’s the only friend I remember having at OU) only a few rooms away from mine and we would spend those quiet weekend evenings in her dorm room, whining and consoling each other about how clueless we were to pick OU and that it wasn’t anything like we thought it would be (even though it was just as beautiful as the brochures portrayed). Worst of all, we felt pressure knowing we would need to transfer to new schools as soon as that quarter ended.

To be continued . . .