To This State Fair Queen, They Were Commoners

 

To This State Fair Queen, They Were Commoners

By Marc. D. Allen

The Indianapolis Star 

November 16, 1995

    She doesn't brag about the day she met the Beatles. Doesn't carry around pictures or consider it a defining moment of her life. She even skipped their concert. "It was just a thing on my schedule that I needed to do that day", she says. "And now, as I look back on it, how stupid that sounds, but that's the way it was."

     She's recalling September 3, 1964, Cheryl Secrest-Simpson, now 48, married for a second time and living outside Denver, Colorado, was 17-year-old Cheryl Garrett, back then, Queen of the Indiana State Fair. Her duties included meeting, greeting, and appearing on the stage to introduce the acts at the fair, which included the Osmond Brothers, Andy Williams, Tennessee Ernie Ford, and the Beatles. 

    The Beatles failed to make an impact on Cheryl, who grew up in Peru, Indiana. Every other girl photographed even in rough proximity to the Fab Four looks positively hysterical. Not Cheryl.  "I guess I was a small-town sheltered girl," she said in a telephone interview. "I didn't know that I was supposed to be all excited and that this was it, the thing to do. If I would have been from a larger city, maybe their popularity would have been more on my back doorstep. But it wasn't that big of a deal to me."

     She estimates spending 15 to 20 minutes with John, Paul, George, and Ringo at their press conference. "Ringo was exceptionally nice. He was kind of joking around. I guess he thought I was nervous," said Seacrest Simpson. "As I look back on it, to think that these young men had such popularity, you would think their heads would have been way up in the clouds. But they weren't. They're people, and they were very nice, very nice to me. That was a fun, nice press conference, but the nicest person that I met was Tennessee Ernie Ford. He was just a jewel."

     Incidentally, she didn't appear on stage with The Beatles. They suggested she skip that honor. "They were afraid for my safety, leaving the stage and then going out into Indianapolis," says the mother of two sons. "They said kids would want the gloves I had on that I shook their hands with. They said they would just tear you apart."  She gave the gloves to her cousin from Chicago and kept a few photos for herself. 

    She didn't even go to the concert that night, although she had tickets to sit in the governor's box. "I had an opportunity to go out with an old flame that evening who lived in Indianapolis", Seacrest- Simpson says, laughing a can you believe it laugh. "So I went out with him instead".