I won the first Southwest Missouri Junior Miss Pageant sponsored by the Carthage Jaycees. The first two Maple Leaf parades didn¡¯t have a queen, so in the third parade (in 1968), I was the first to reign over the Maple Leaf activities.

The Junior Miss pageant was a national pageant. It emphasized scholastics and drew contestants from Joplin, Nevada, Springfield, Lockwood, Jasper and Carthage. There were many duties throughout the year and my mother, Muriel Ball,  wow gold shop got to enjoy all of this with me before she died a few years later. My sister, Cathy Long, won Miss Congeniality three years later.

Being in the Maple Leaf Parade was a thrill and is such a great memory for me. There is nothing like a high-school or college band to bring back those memories. The Mizzou band, along with its ¡°Golden Girls¡± and the Navy band were in the ¡¯68 parade, and people were lined all along the street smiling, waving and taking pictures.

One particular guy did take a photo of me and as fate would have it, our paths crossed again soon after that, when I was in the audience of a Carthage High School play. Also there was Jim Crocker, brother of Susie Crocker who was in the play, whom I already knew. After the play, I was talking to Sally Crawford, the director of the play, when I noticed Jim and his family in the lobby, and I was hoping he noticed me. It turns out Jim¡¯s father pointed me out to him. Jim found out from Susie who I was and he started calling. As it turned out, maple story mesos Jim and my dad, Tom Ball, worked together at Leggett & Platt.

Having not actually met Jim, I agreed to have coffee with him at the C&W Caf¨¦ on the Carthage square. We must have sat there in a booth below the mural of Carthage for an hour and a half getting acquainted. He told me about the photo he took of me in the ¡¯68 parade. He said he had to chase the convertible in which I was riding for two blocks to get the now famous picture ¡ª at least famous to us.