By Shelby Stewart-Soldan
ssoldan@mihomepaper.com
West Lafayette, Ind. — At 81 years old, June Ciampa Lauer can still twirl.
On Sept. 28, Lauer went back to Purdue University for the alumni half-time show against the University of Notre Dame where she got to join over 900 alumni on the field and twirl her baton as the oldest living Golden Girl.
“We had nine Golden Girls come back, but they all twirled on the end zone, and I twirled for about a minute and handed it off to the current Golden Girl,” said Lauer, a Brandon Township resident. “The best part was the audience just roared.”
The Golden Girl is the original, coveted baton twirler position at Purdue University, one of five coveted baton twirling positions with the marching band. Lauer was the fourth Golden Girl in the university’s history. She served as the Golden Girl from 1961 to 1962 and 1964 to 1965. The position originated in 1954, and the alumni game honored the 70 year anniversary of the Golden Girl.
“In 1954, when the band director started there, she created the position,” said Lauer. “Purdue was really the only one who had a female twirler at the time. Most of the schools had guys.”
Lauer began baton twirling when she was eight. At the time, her neighbor was a champion twirler, and she was fascinated with the craft.
“Finally, one day, I really kept bugging my mom to let me twirl, and my grandma said I was going to go,” she said. “She paid for my first few lessons, which I took for a year, and then I taught myself. I twirled and was head majorette in high school, and I started competing from a really young age. I ended up teaching national champions myself, and I taught a few girls that went on to Purdue to become Golden Girls as well.”
When Lauer was debating where to go to college, there was already a Golden Girl at Purdue, so she looked at other schools. However, that Golden Girl, Addie Darling, died of an aneurysm in 1960 before she was able to graduate.
“My band director in high school, he said I had to go to Purdue,” said Lauer. “With that, I said ‘okay.’ The school was a great school, but I didn’t have any trouble getting in. I tried out after I was there. I was just cocky enough to be pretty darn sure I was going to win. I knew I could beat them all.”
That year, over 75 girls tried out for the position of Golden Girl, and all of them were twirling at the same time while the band director watched.
“After about a minute, he told me to sit down,” she said. “Which could be really good or really bad. Then he asked me to go twirl for his wife, who was also a band director, and she was screening the girls too. I went and twirled for her, and she said ‘he just picked you.’ To this day, she and I are still friends. And I was friends with him until he died at 104.”
Lauer served as the Golden Girl for a year before the band director came to her with a conflict.
“I didn’t know this at the time, but when the Golden Girl before me died, at the funeral, he had promised the younger sister that when she got to Purdue, she would be the Golden Girl,” she said. “In the mean time, I showed up. At the end of the year, the director told me about the promise he had made to Addie Darling’s family, that he promised her sister Teddie she could be the Golden Girl. He didn’t want to put me back in the line, because he said I was too good to be on a team, so he created the International Twirler position.”
As the International Twirler, Lauer wore black and twirled her baton on the opposite end of the field of the Golden Girl. People in the crowd were asking who the girl in black was, and the position came to be known as The Girl in Black. Lauer originated the position, and it is still one of five coveted twirling positions at Purdue to this day.
“When Teddie was done being the Golden Girl, I took over again,” she said. “It’s a very prestigious position. My husband and I have endowed a Golden Girl scholarship to keep that position alive, it’s that important to us.”
Over this past summer, Lauer was with the Purdue twirling team watching them compete when the current coach approached her about twirling for the 70th anniversary.
“I started practicing, and to my shock, my fingers and legs didn’t work like they used to,” said Lauer. “It took me a few weeks to work up to it, I couldn’t do any of the high leaps I used to, but I can still twirl it.”
One of her former students, and a former Golden Girl herself, came up with the idea of twirling and passing the baton on to the current Golden Girl, Emily Cowette, which Lauer found out about the morning of the event.
“The crowd absolutely loved it,” she said. “It was so nostalgic. There’s just something very, very special about the Purdue bands. I twirled literally around the world with them. They just have a wonderful program, and to be able to relive that for just a moment again and hear the audience be so receptive, it was just magical.”