My Darling Aunts: Purdue's Golden Girls

NOW IT ALLLL MAKES SENSE! WHY I LOVE TO GYRATE ON THE DANCE FLOOR... WHO'S A FLIRT? NOT ME!

I just found an article about when aunt Adelaide marched on the field of Notre Dame. Grandma told me about how Adelaide was the first woman to step on the field of Notre Dame and look what I found!!!!! I know there are two more articles out there, the one mentioned in the Chicago Tribune about Teddy and there's another Sport's Illustraited one about Adelaide. Woo hoo!!!

In their own words..

Purdue Band alums share special memories of Golden Girls

William Burk: I remember arriving in the caravan of buses at the Notre Dame practice field next to their dorms. Teddy Darling was dressed in gold toreador pants that almost looked like she had been painted with gold paint. The "men" of Notre Dame literally flowed out of their dorms to google at Teddy and the other girls. When we marched to and from the stadium we had to surround the girls with the first few ranks of trombones.

Larry Burkhart: While at Purdue, I got a job at the outdoor ice rink behind the Co-Rec Gym as a rink guard. We went early to "shovel off" the ice before skating began. One evening, Teddy Darling arrived early and asked if she could practice with racing blades, which were prohibited during public skating. "Sure you can skate" was the answer. We discussed the AAMB and all the activities often. One day Teddie said she had something that would go well with my hat and keep my neck warm while on the outdoor rink. She took off a long silk gold scarf and gave it to me and said thanks for letting her skate early. After that, I wore the scarf when at the rink. Along with many other memories, I still have the gold scarf and a Chicago Tribune magazine with Teddy Darling featured on the front cover.

Brian William "Bill" Maxey: I have one Golden Girl story I can share, dating back to when Adelaide Darling was Golden Girl. It was 1957 or 58 and the band was playing on national television at Notre Dame. The half-time show included a hula dance by the Golden Girl, with appropriate accompanying music and motion from the band. From my position in the trumpet section, I was so captivated by Addie's seductive gyrations that I messed up the routine! With my eyes fixed where they shouldn't have been fixed, I failed to bow down from the waist along with all the other band members, and was on national TV standing straight up while everyone else had swayed down. I didn't mind the national TV exposure of this error, the real problem was in the videotape which Al G. Wright played on Monday, and re-played, and re-played. I got a boatload of demerits and, yes, I got to carry the FUBAR board for that week. In my years with the Purdue band, that was my one moment of fame. Make that infamy.

http://www.purdue.edu/BANDS/goldengirl/memories.htm

She had even made it into sports illustrated!!!! Check this one out:

WOMEN IN MOTION

Now all together, let us face Up to a relatively new problem in human affairs: Woman's Place on the Football Field. Not to be lightly regarded either, mind you, for here is a question that has aroused controversy across a goodly chunk of mid-America recently. There is, for your first consideration, Purdue's Golden Girl, a Miss Adelaide Darling. Miss Darling, to the dismay of her sister coeds, appeared at half time of the Purdue-Notre Dame game in the fetching, skin-tight, gold lamé whatchamacallit you see at the left. Her twitching performance was a hula dance, she said, but another girl reflected: "She not only walks and talks but wiggles excessively." So much tittle-tattle to Adelaide, who only slightly modified her act at the Illinois game last week.

http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1003077/index.htm



AND here's where her "gyrations" are further discussed:

In 1958, Purdue's "Golden Girl," a gold spangled freshman majorette named Adelaide Darling, "wiggled too much in doing her hula dance last weekend at the Purdue-Notre Dame game," as the AP story explained, and after complaints from Purdue coeds she had to be de-wiggled for the Illinois contest. The resulting crush of photographers the following Saturday forced officials to ask sweet Adelaide to move away from the Purdue bench before the game. Such stories invariable indulged in at least one cheap pun, in this case the comment that "the blonde freshman from Manteca, Cal., went thru her halftime show without any backfield-in-motion penalites being called." Sports Illustrated rhapsodized over Miss Darling's "fetching, skin-tight, gold lame whatchamacallit" ...

King Football: Sport and Spectacle in the Golden Age of Radio http://books.google.com/books?id=Sh7mAxJ9WKgC&pg=PA187&lpg=PA187&dq=Adelaide+Darling&source=web&ots=yO6nXuX_Ci&sig=uhlRLrLeUG1OxIT9btvx5nLxHoQ&hl=en

Matters of the Heart

My friend told me today that he has achieved the things he has aspired for and doesn't feel that anything is happening in his life to make it feel worthwhile. While not talking in a depressed way, I feel that he is in a place where he is readying himself mentally for change. Isn't that what this life is all about? Were we created to revel in complacency or were we given these gifts of internal metamorphosis for a reason? When do we look around and find ourselves in the center of the grey? When we can see that we've found balance from either end of the spectrum and we are not struggling and striving? And when we find that, will we feel that life is too easy and seemingly pointless? Is it the struggle that makes us happy?



The millionaire mogul isn't content sitting at home spending his money, he is out making more; not because he needs it or wants it, but because the chase of it fuels him.



Then I wonder, is it really the chase and the struggle that keeps us motivated or is it the idea of change? Such as, what if my friend mentioned above did ONE thing different. What if he chose another path to enhance this equilibrium he has achieved in his life? What if he became a mentor to a boy without a dad? What would my friend's life look like then? What if my friend took the risky leap of love or entrepreneurship or bungee jumping? What hurricane could those butterflies wings do to inspire him and shake him up enough to spread the warm fuzzies through his being? The fuzzies akin to requited love. You know that feeling, you made your first big deal at work and it was as satisfying as your first kiss from your long-time crush.



I think my friend is starting to stir. Something inside has started to flutter and he doesn't know what to do with it. He can't name it- and what do you do with something when it's nameless? How do you handle it? You begin to distrust it. You feel uneasy about it. You want to question it down to its root, it's origin, it's genesis, so that you can compartmentalize it along with all the other things you already know about yourself and your life. That's a slippery slope my friend, a slippery slope when your on the cusp of CHANGE.



I have no advice to give.

No words of wisdom.



But as someone who has embrased the flutter, I have done the dance. Towards change, I have run through the praries as though running into my lover's arms, only to find moments later that I have turned on my heels and run, run, run away. The thing is... that change... that fluttering... that longing it instills... no matter where I run it's always there and I always find myself hypnotized by it... and I always find myself in that prarie. And each time I run closer to my lovers embrase, my lover, my personal change, before I turn away. Am I turning away from me? Am I turning away from the old me or the new me? Am I turning from my God? Am I turning from all the things that I want and fear will evade me? Do I fear it's all a mirage and the intangibility will become a reality when I reach my lover, my change?



I don't know. That's why I have no advice. Not that anyone is asking for it.



But what I do know, is that my lover, my change, myself, the Jessie who I am deep down and who I want to be is the woman who I embrace. I know she is not an illusion. She has fought long and hard for her authenticity and her VOICE.



Hear me ROAR!



Find me in the golden prarie.



Rolling around

amongst the flowers.



Down here I can't run

and

I'm not hiding



I'm allowing it all to happen

without fear

I am risking.

Down in the golden prarie the lion can stalk its prey...

...but my ROAR is LOUDER...

BRING IT ON!



"Whatever you have forgotten, you can remember. Whatever you have buried you can unearth. If you are willing to look deep into your own nature, if you are willing to peel away the layers of not-self you have adopted in making your way through the tribulations of life, you will find that your true self is not as far removed as you think."
- Meredith Jordan