Jane Pauley returns home to Hoosier Girls State

Though her career has made her a household name and taken her around the world, Jane Pauley remains a proud fifth-generation Hoosier.

She was glad for the opportunity to return to her home state Wednesday, speaking to Hoosier Girls State delegates at Trine University and interviewing four delegates who ran for the event’s governor. The interview will appear on an episode of CBS Sunday Morning in August or September.

Pauley herself is a Hoosier Girls State alumna and was elected governor when she attended in 1967. She previously spoke to Hoosier Girls State in 1979.

Cheerleading dreams crushed

Speaking to the delegates, Pauley said she originally came to Hoosier Girls State following one of her biggest disappointments in life: getting cut from the cheerleading squad at Warren Central High School in Indianapolis.

“It was the will of the student body that those five other girls would be cheerleaders,” she recalled. “My big sister Ann, hearing the news, came to the gym to hold her sobbing sister. My dream was over. I was not chosen.”

Instead, she joined the school’s speech and debate team, winning first place in her first tournament.

“Discovering that I had a talent in something that wasn’t cheerleading was a revelation, and that’s pretty much why I’m here today,” she said.

She said she doubts she would have been elected Hoosier Girls State governor running against the current candidates.

However, when she was elected governor, her father, a Republican “with a capital R,” boasted about the accomplishment to the head of the Indiana Democratic State Central Committee at a church breakfast. That resulted in a job offer from the Democratic Party, and while working there a staff member from WISH-TV told her he was looking for a reporter “and specifically a female-type person.”

“That was the start of a career that, very astonishingly, quickly took me to the Today Show and Dateline,” she said.

She praised those in attendance, saying, “You girls chose to be here at an exercise in government and practicing politics at a time when, for some people, politics might be a popular word.”

“I salute you. And I salute all the young people who recognize that there has never been a time when we needed more public servants who can talk to each other.”

Following her address, organizers of Hoosier Girls State named Pauley an Honorary Citizen for this year’s event.

Interview for Good Morning

Pauley then adjourned with four delegates, all of whom had run for governor and two of whom had been elected the candidates for their respective parties, for an interview that will air on a future CBS Good Morning.

Pauley said the idea sprang out of recent documentaries on Boys State and Girls State that are available on Apple TV.

“The fact that I had been governor of Hoosier Girls State many years ago, this seemed an opportunity, and I’m very grateful that we did,” she said.

Besides being glad to “come home and see all those Indiana license plates,” Pauley said she enjoyed meeting and talking to the Hoosier Girls State governor candidates.

“They're good spokesmen for the generation,” she said. “They are aware of the circumstances that they're growing up in. It sounds trite, but I feel better about the world for having met them and the girls at the program.”