Queen Mary Jo - Lifetime Legacies & Lunch, part 2
Rae Gravley's series continues with "Queen Mary Jo"
One of my favorite storytellers was Mrs. Mary Jo Brown. She grew up in the neighborhood when all the children went to the “county school”. Her daddy was on the school board and she spent many happy hours biking and skating with the girls in the neighborhood, and under the portico at the Olsen House, sitting in the backseat of a 1928 Packard Touring Car. (That’s a convertible, according to Mary Jo.) She and her girlfriends were playing “queen contestants”, and her little brother was their chauffer. They only got out of the car when a real tornado alert sent them to home and shelter.
Because Mrs. Brown showed some real entrepreneurial spirit and convinced her father’s patrons at the barber shop to vote for her, she won the real queen contest in her eighth grade year; winners were the ones who collected the most money or votes for the school. She says she felt like Cinderella, and it was the first time she was given red roses. In her telling I could see the pride and joy of being queen, even if it was just a school fundraiser.
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Rae Gravley volunteers as CCC's Story Chronicler. This collection of stories from the North Park neighborhood has added stories each Wednesday morning.