Editor’s Note: This article is the second part of a three-part series profiling the torchbearers in Ellettsville’s part of the relay. Part one appeared in the Aug. 17 issue of The Journal. Part three will run Aug. 31.
Of the more than 2,000 participants in the Indiana Bicentennial Torch Relay, three will make their way through Ellettsville: Smithville CEO and Chair Darby McCarty; Co-founder of The Ellettsville Journal Maurice Endwright, represented by Diana Choate; and B.G. Hoadley Quarries CEO Pat Fell Barker.
“We need more great people like Maurice Endwright,” Choate said.
She nominated him to represent Ellettsville in the relay at the suggestion of Ellettsville resident Jeana Kapczynski, who felt she was a good person to do so since the two worked together for several years on the Monroe County Fall Festival Committee.
“Any time the committees met, he wanted them to come to his house and meet,” Choate said. “He participated in all the things that went on with the festival.”
That remained true until the last festival in which Endwright would play a part. He was ill and homebound. On the last night, Choate and Endwright’s doctor sat on his porch because the doctor was not sure he would make it. Still, Endwright sent Choate to the festival stage to see if it was time for him to close it.
“We put him in a wheelchair and wheeled him down, so he could close down the festival,” she said. “In his top hat.”
About six months later, he passed away.
Choate’s mother, Myrtle Jacobs, used to deliver the news from the Ellettsville Church of Christ, where her family attends, to Endwright for The Journal. One day she walked in while he was working on an obituary for another woman named Myrtle, and he accidentally put her name in the newspaper.
“Somebody saw her and said, ‘I just saw in The Journal that you died.'” Choate said. “Our next-door neighbor had grown up. He still got The Journal, he lived in Alabama, still does. He called his mom and said, ‘I can’t believe that Myrt died and you didn’t even call me to tell me. She goes, ‘Well, she didn’t die. I just talked to her on the phone.'”
Endwright wrote an apology in the next edition of the newspaper and corrected the obituary. He brought Jacobs a box of strawberries.
This year is Choate’s third year as president of the festival committee. She also serves as general chair and heads the information and photo booths. In many ways, she has taken the torch carried by Endwright, who earned the nickname “Mr. Fall Festival” during his lifetime.
“I always tell people, if you get compliments, it was a success,” Choate said.
Her experience with the festival started as a helper in the band boosters food stand, where her parents helped to support her older brother.
“You were a big shot when you got old enough to wait the tables,” she said.
She became a volunteer page as an eighth grader, passing messages and finding people when they needed to be found, until one year Endwright asked her to help Jane Kiser with the log cabin.
About 25 years ago, when the younger of her two children, Krista, was five years old, she decided it was time for them to get involved. That year, they swept the floors at the hotel on the corner of North Sale Street and Main Street to help it prepare for an art show, then they helped Tom Kapczynski string lights.
Her older daughter, Kimberly, is 34 now and has moved away from town. But Krista stayed in Ellettsville and her children, ages 10 and 9, became the fourth generation of her family to be involved with the festival last year.
Choate will accept the torch from McCarty on Matthews Drive and take it from there to Temperance Street, then past The Journal office on North Sale Street to Main Street. She’ll pass it to Barker at the Heritage Trail, who will take it to Hartstrait Road.
She planned to walk, but Indiana State Police declared it unsafe. Instead, she will ride in a 1963 Lincoln Continental convertible driven by Barker. Though she was disappointed she could not walk her part, she was honored to be in it.
“I’m proud of all his accomplishments, of having the opportunity to work with him,” Choate said through tears. “And just glad that he’s being honored.”
Originally published in Ellettsville Journal, 2016. Republished here for archival and portfolio purposes.