Page 16 - LIN DEC WEB

chickee talk Lucy has this magnetic smile and a laugh so genuine that

you can’t help but want to be around her. Lucy is fiercely loyal
A Look Back and is the type of person that you always know where you stand.
She does not mince words, but if she doesn’t like you, then you
definitely are the one taking the loss, because she does not believe
A Conversation Between Friends in or practice small talk. She speaks and acts with purpose. That
is rare. Lucy also has the voice of a true country music diva. Her
voice brings tears to my eyes. Lucy spent many years living in
by Tina Osceola Nashville after she graduated high school and she learned the ins
and outs of the music business. Lucy can walk into any club in
ave you ever thought about having Nashville and there will be someone there calling out her name.
a conversation with your teen self Our most favorite story to reminisce about is when the former
Hand one of her friends? I was Tribal Chairman, James Billie, flew us to North Carolina to attend
researching quotes from my grandfather, a conference held at Western Carolina University. Lucy stayed in
Cory Osceola, and came upon an article Cherokee at a hotel while I was housed in the dorms on campus.
about my friend, Lucy Bowers and I. Written I remember that I was already in college myself and so dorm life
in August of 1986, I was 18 and Lucy was did not interest me in the least. As we spoke of this trip on that
17. The headline was, “Young Seminoles same phone call, we laughed because she talked some friends of
Blend Past Into Future.” As soon as I saw it, I immediately hers who lived in the area to drive her to campus and sneak me
downloaded a copy and sent it to Lucy! Her reaction and our out of the dorm. In order to avoid sounding the alarms, I snuck
conversation was my motivation for this month’s article. out of the window. I remembered how high the windows were
As I hit SEND, I realized that 35 years later, Lucy is one from the ground and Lucy yelling from the parking lot, “Jump!
of those people who I have kept close to my heart and mind You’ll live!” So, I did… I jumped and yes, I lived. We laughed so
throughout almost a lifetime. A few years can go by without seeing hard remembering that night and for the life of us we do not know
or talking to each other and we start off almost like we were never how we set this adventure up without having cell phones. We were
apart. silent for a few seconds trying to think back, but again, we just
Almost immediately, Lucy texted back. After a few seconds, started laughing.
she actually called me. After a few good laughs about our younger You see, this article was about two individual young women
selves, I asked her if she remembered the article because, frankly, who happened to win titles in our Tribal pageant. The reporters
I did not. Her response was not what I expected. I expected Lucy wanted to tell the story of two exceptional young women who
and I to trip down memory lane in a fit of laughter at ourselves, were separate and above… but we were not. We were two normal
but that did NOT happen. The article triggered a traumatic teenagers who happened to be Seminole and who became lifelong
memory for Lucy. The reporter had taken her comments and friends. Our lives didn’t fit their storyline, so they crammed in a
conversation out of context and it caused so many hard feelings quote here and a quote there, but in looking back, the reporters
between not only Lucy and her friends, but Lucy and her family. never really told the readers who we were as people. I think about
She said that she found herself spending months apologizing to that a lot as I read articles covering the lives of people I don’t know
people. Seeing that article brought back horrific memories that and will forever remember the trauma in my friend’s voice as she
had long lasting effects. relived the horrors of one newspaper article.
So I went back and read the article. It was like having a
conversation with myself but when I read Lucy’s article, it didn’t
sound like her at all. I noticed that the article had two different
reporters and they each had a separate and distinct approach. The
reporter who interviewed me seemed to find a story to tell but
Lucy’s seemed to have a story they wanted to tell and just took
excerpts out of the conversation that suited the story they had
already written in their mind. Bad journalism in a nutshell.
As I read Lucy’s article for what was probably the 24th time,
I realized they painted this picture of a 17-year-old who set
themselves apart from other Seminoles and those at her own
school. They painted this picture of an elitist who resented her
own people, which is so far from the truth. So, I want to tell you
about my friend, Lucy Bowers. Lucy grew up on the Brighton
Seminole Indian Reservation, south of Lake Okeechobee. She
moved to the Hollywood Reservation as a teenager, where she
immersed herself in music. I could easily give you her biography,
The Miami Herald (Miami, Florida) 14 August 1986. Source: Newspapers.com
but just like this article, it would never tell the story about my
friend. So let me tell you about Lucy Bowers.
16 Life in Naples | December 2021