From Best of Sports Talk- She Said Yes

This is the second Valentine's Day special from my e-book Best of Sports Talk. This is the only time I ever wrote a sports column about a marriage proposal. The column was set up by one I had written two years earlier when Lamar High School senior Leigh Hughes received her first kiss in front of 1,500 people at the basketball homecoming. Both columns are included in the book.

Only a few feet in front of the spot where she received her first kiss, Leigh Hughes received a proposal of marriage during basketball homecoming ceremonies at Lamar Friday night.

When announcer Ray Grissom asked her to come out of the audience, she thought it had something to do with her status as the 1993 basketball queen.

Then as she stood in front of the capacity crowd, she heard him say, “Here he comes.”

Striding across the gymnasium was her boyfriend, Doug Kirkpatrick, carrying a bouquet of flowers.

“I was so happy when I saw him,” she said.

Doug had been looking for the perfect way to ask Leigh to spend the rest of her life with him. Friday was a special day for the couple, who met when they were counselors at a church camp. “It’s our one year, five month anniversary,” she said. She thought she was going to spend it alone.

“She always said that the best thing that happened to her in high school was when she was crowned homecoming queen and received her first kiss in front of the crowd and then the newspaper article was written about it. It was a special night for her. I knew the homecoming was coming up so I decided to see if I could ask her there.”

The first thing he did was ask Leigh’s parents, Leroy and Nancy Hughes, for permission to ask for their daughter’s hand in marriage. After he received their blessing, he asked Nancy, who is Lamar R-1 school nurse, if the special proposal could be arranged.

It was okayed by Superintendent Barbara Burns and High School Principal Chuck Blaney with no problems, but it ran into a snag in the person of Athletic Director Dewey Pennell.

“He said Doug would have to get on the microphone and ask her to marry him so everybody could hear him or he couldn’t do it,” Nancy said. Doug quickly agreed to the condition.

He and Leigh had already looked over rings at a Joplin jewelry store. He bought the ring earlier this week. Of course, as fate would have it, the two had their first argument this week.

Doug, an Olathe, Kan. resident, said the disagreement came “because I wasn’t coming to Lamar for our one year, five month anniversary.”

It took a while, but Leigh’s sister, Lindsay, a high school junior who conducted the campaign, without Leigh’s approval, which won her the homecoming queen crown two years earlier (she told the students that if Leigh won she would receive her first kiss in front of everyone), talked her into going to the homecoming games.

The two had also talked about Doug. “She said, ‘I know he’s going to ask me to marry him; I just don’t know when.’ I almost laughed my head off.

“I wanted to tell her so bad. We’ve always been close. I tell her everything.”

She resisted the urge. She’s happy she did.

Doug Kirkpatrick’s hands were shaking slightly as he grasped the microphone, preparing to speak the most important words of his young life. Leigh was shaking all over.

Doug quickly recounted the story of how Leigh received her first kiss in front of the homecoming crowd. “I wish I would have been the one,” he said.

He told her he planned to do “everything I can to see that you’re happy for the rest of your life.”

He dropped to his knees and spoke from his heart. “Leigh, I love you. Will you marry me?”

His words came over the microphone loud and clear. Leigh did not give her answer over the microphone, but the smile on her face and the tender kiss that followed spoke volumes.

The proposal also changed Leigh’s plans for the evening, sister Lindsay said.

“She told me she was going to watch movies,” Lindsay said. “She won’t be watching any movies tonight.”

She doesn’t need to.

In one moment which will remain forever etched in her heart, Leigh Hughes saw the rest of her life flash before her eyes.

(Originally published February 4, 1995)