Elly Mae Clampett aka Donna Douglas May Have Come To Our Town

At my son's graduation, there was an older woman ... not dressed in black or linen white ... In fact, she was wearing pink with a pink hat and bright pink lipstick ... and I thought, that's the kind of woman I want to be when I am that age.  People stopped to speak to her as she moved through the crowd, but no more or no less than the rest of us.  She had a presence that was, for lack of a better way to say it, unusual.

I stood up and pretended to take a picture of everyone at the other end of the table, but I had the zoom pointed at her.  She seemed to see me taking the picture and turned to face me while she continued to talk to the gentleman next to her.

I didn't think much about it until yesterday when I was transferring pictures to a disc to have them developed ... I smiled again ... I haven't seen anyone wear their hair curly and swept to the side like that since Elly Mae Clampett ...

Wait a minute!  No way!  Could that have been Elly Mae?

I googled Elly Mae Clampett (Donna Douglas) and one of the first pictures to come up was this one:

Now, you tell me ... Same hair, same lipstick, same shirt (pink must be her favorite color) ...

Did Elly Mae Clampett attend the same graduation that we did?

I called Joey into the room ... He agreed.  Same woman.  I called my son and said, "Some people have presidents attend their graduations, but you might have had Elly Mae Clampett, and she is way better than any president!  Joey and I laughed at the coincidence ... me being close enough to take the picture, but not recognizing her until two weeks later ...

Still, it was a pretty cool coincidence, don't you think so?