December 2004                                             The Megaphone                                                        Page 8

Wendell Willkie and Me

by Jane Ann (Seright) Lemen

I've been reading the stories about the black baby dolls with great interest -- and am so glad we're moving beyond racial stereotypes, etc.  We have four children and eight grandchildren -- and four of our grandchildren are bi-racial. And we love them to death. We had a small room in our house that no matter our intentions always seemed to wind up as a "junk room." Finally, with all these grandkids coming around (the first four were born within 14 months of each other, and the eight range in age from 7 to 1, so you can see they're pretty close together) I suggested to Gordie that we make that little room into a playroom for the grandkids, one of my better ideas. They absolutely love it. We dug out a lot of toys left from raising our four from the attic (the toys, not our children, were in the attic) and they seem to like them the best.
             

But we did buy a few things, among them two small dolls and some doll clothes. And we made sure that we had both a black doll and a white doll. What's been so great about the dolls is that the grandkids don't seem to mind which doll they play with. In fact when they say which doll they want, invariably they describe it by the color of the clothes on it, not by the color of the doll itself.
     

I too have received some flack about being from Elwood -- although my dearest black friend, the lady I eulogized in the Megaphone last spring, was excited about Elwood because of it being the hometown of Wendell Willkie who had been a friend and hero of her husband Frank Beckwith (who in turn was a hero in the black community of Indianapolis -- he was the first black ever nominated for President at a major convention. There's a park named after him here in Indy.)
     

I got over telling (admitting to) people I was from Elwood when I was in high school. I was at church camp at Epworth Forest on Lake Webster one summer and had a "summer romance" with a guy from Logansport. One night the program was a gospel singer named Pruth McFarland who was black and also crippled, singing from a wheelchair. But when he sang, you forgot all those minor things and marveled at his voice and his obvious faith.

My date asked if I would like to go backstage after the performance and get Mr. McFarland's autograph. I definitely wanted to do that. When we got there, there were many others also getting autographs, and I noticed that Mr. McFarland asked each person what their name was and where they were from. Others were answering "Kokomo," "Peru," and other towns in the area. I thought, "Oh, no, I don't want to say Elwood.  Maybe I should say Anderson or even Alexandria." But that wouldn't work because as soon as I lied, my date would correct me. So when it was my turn I said, "Elwood." Mr. McFarland's pen stopped (so did my heart), he raised his head and looked me straight in the eye.

"Do you go to Wendell L. Willkie High School?" he asked. "Yes." He smiled and said, "The greatest honor of my life was to sing in the high school named after that man." He went on to describe the entrance to the high school -- the steps up to the main floor, the trophy cases by the entrance to the auditorium, the Winged Victory above the doors. I decided from that moment on to say I was from Elwood with pride in knowing that in spite of all its human foibles, it had also produced Willkie. Whenever I encounter someone who speaks negatively about Elwood, I always reply, "Hey, a town that produces both Wendell Willkie and me can't be all bad."

Jane Ann (Seright) Lemen '59

northwest Indy 

Back to the Megaphone Page or to the Lynx Page