Susan Begley & Carol Reeder

“When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity.” --Albert Einstein

I was digging through the EHHS website not long ago and found a section about school history and traditions. There were some pictures of the school as it was being built and some other pages describing the school’s history. It’s kind of sobering to be considered a part of history on a website, yet interesting in a way—you are still here to see if they are getting it right. I remember going to that school when it looked like it did in those old historic pictures! To tell you the truth, it doesn’t seem that long ago.

One of the “history” pages outlined the tradition of the Miss “Big E” beauty pageant. There is long list of the winners since 1961 when 62 Highlander, Darla Houlihan won the first title. I don’t think we called the winner, “Miss Big E” though. She might have taken offense at the use of "big" in conjunction with being named the winner. Our class yearbooks simply refer to the winners as the Big “E” pageant winner. There is a difference, don't you agree?

The Big “E” winners I recall most clearly were Carol Reeder and Susan Begley who won the pageant in 1962 and 1963, respectively. It’s a bit of a shock to see a list of 40 or more Big “E” winners following Carol and Susan’s names. I knew them both and to this day would be pressed to name two more beautiful ladies. They were gracious, soft spoken, very intelligent, and any lad would have been considered lucky to date them. I think there were only a couple of lads that did date them. They were lucky lads.

After we left EHHS, the wider world opened up and there were other attractive girls to appreciate, but I never forgot Carol and Susan. They were really beautiful girls who, I believe set a very high standard for those that followed them at EHHS.

In addition to winning the Big “E” beauty pageant, each of them was elected Football Queen during their senior years. That was probably a purer vote than the Big “E” judges’ tally since only members of the football teams cast those votes. Evening gown and talent competitions were not required for that honor.

Remerciez heaven de jolies filles.