A song can change a person's life.  Man of La Mancha's The Impossible Dream, Carousel's You'll Never Walk Alone, The Sound of Music's Climb Every Mountain.  The song that transformed my life isn't as lofty as those classics.  It was 26 Miles and the Four Preps' singing about Santa Catalina Island that forever altered my existence on this earth.

Like most 1950s teens, I devoured fan magazines the moment they hit the newsstand.  One sunny Sunday afternoon as my parents, two sisters, and I were on the way home from our weekly visit to my grandparents, I quickly flipped through the entire latest issue of Teen Magazine which I'd bought that day with most of my weekly allowance.  I went back to a small black and white picture that intrigued me.  It was the Four Preps and had a story about them, how the group came into being, and of their recordings of "Dreamy Eyes" and "Fools Will Be Fools."  In my 13-year old eyes, just like the song titles in the article, the quartet became the ultimate in dreaminess and I became a fool for them.  I started following their career, quietly pondering and plotting how I'd meet them some day.

How to do it?  It was easy to reach celebrities back then.  The appellations "groupie" and "stalker" weren't used to describe fans.  All you had to do was write a letter, ask for an autographed picture, send it to him/her/them in care of a movie studio, tv network, or recording company and mark the envelope "Personal."  I sat down, poured out my heart, pledged everlasting devotion, and asked if I could start a Four Preps fan club, and sent it off care of Capitol Records.  The worst that could happen was the letter could get lost in the mail or they'd say "Thanks, but no thanks."

It took every ounce of composure within me when I got home from school one day (back then girls actually took classes in comportment) and there was a package for me with Bruce Belland's name and address in the upper left hand corner.  In it was a letter of appreciation for my letter and I was officially designated President of the Four Preps Fan Club #4 - aka the Detroit Chapter.  There was also a stack of glossy pictures and fan club membership cards.  I immediately began building the club's membership.  Within weeks many of my Annapolis Jr. High classmates were convinced, cajoled, and even bribed into joining the club.  A few of the boys who were athletes needed help keeping their "C" averages, so in exchange for their $1 membership fee I "helped" them with their English assignments.  Chapter #4 became an international one when I listed it in the fan magazines that gratis printed such things for avid fans.

Membership swelled when "26 Miles" hit the charts and the Preps appeared on tv shows including "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet," "American Bandstand" and "The Dick Clark Saturday Night Beechnut Show."  The latter was so ific (that's 50s speak for "splendid," "groovy," "far
out" - the shortened version of "terrific") that no one went out on a date until after the show was over.

Growing up in the suburbs of Detroit, the closest any of us came to surfboards were the paddleboards we rented and, as the name suggests, paddled on when we'd go to nearby lakes.  But none of them, not even the Great Lakes themselves, had anything close enough to a wave on which you could hang two toes let alone ten.  When the Preps sang about a tropical island covered with trees and girls (and where there were girls there had to be boys), we all totally grooved out.  Our parents had Bali Ha'i to dream of; we had Catalina.  It called to us - an island filled with hopes, dreams, and romance, romance, romance.  It was our own special island.

When I saw the Four Preps were going to be appearing at the Michigan State Fair in the summer of 1958, I became very ambitious and highly inventive.  However, I was still too shy to ask the Preps themselves if I could meet them.  Instead, I wrote to the fair's Publicity Department.  The p.r. director himself answered me.  Absolutely, he said - just come to his office and I'd be given what decades later would be called all-backstage area privileges.

The only negative reaction to the plan was from my mother.  She wasn't about to let her just-turned 14 year old daughter spend time alone with not just one but four teen heart throbs.  "They're in show business," she kept saying.  An odd comment coming from a woman who'd married one of Detroit's most popular entertainers.  (Mama thought she knew best.)

She finally gave in after hours of my whining, moping, and Girl Scouts' honoring I'd be good and nothing would, could happen.  After all, one of the Preps was a minister's son and two were Mormons.  There was a catch though.  Mama would take my little sister and me to the fair and retrieve us after we'd met and spent the afternoon with the Preps.  Maxine, who was 12 years old, had a huge crush on Ed Cobb, the Preps' bass.  She had to go with me or I couldn't go at all.  (Maxine was the youngest in the family and was highly indulged by the adults in the family.)

Wanting to show the world how much I adored the Four Preps I utilized some of my Home Ec skills and embroidered a black skirt with outlines of some of the Preps' 45 rpm records and interspersed them with the group's first names.  The ensemble was completed with a matching white blouse and, as they were de rigueur, impeccably polished white tennis shoes.  Before going to the trailer/dressing room outside the Coliseum, I walked around the fair with Mama and Maxine 'til the appointed Noon hour.  It was free publicity for the Preps and the rest of those on the bill - Tennessee Ernie Ford and Molly Bee.  Bruce, Glen, Don, and Ed were thrilled with the outfit when we met.  Blush?  I thought I'd die as they marvelled over my stitching efforts.

The afternoon went by far too quickly.  I forgot all about the stack of 3"x5" index cards I'd prepared with questions to ask.  A budding journalist and having a monthly fan club newsletter to publish and mail to members, I was afraid if I didn't have something tangible to turn to should silence break out I'd pass out.  After all, I was going to be in the presence of four handsome, talented, teen celebrities.

The Preps treated Maxine and I like kid sisters, which I didn't mind at all.  Despite my Machiavellian maneuvering to meet them, I was really a dormouse acting like a lion.  They made sure we got fed (hot dogs, hamburgers, chips, grape or orange soda pop - or both if we wanted).  When time came for Mama to pick us up, Bruce, Glen, Don, and Ed were perfect gentlemen and returned us exactly at 6:30 pm.  Mother had spent the afternoon visiting all the booths and exhibits at the fair.  She later told me she wasn't all that wary of leaving her two precious daughters with young men who sang impeccable harmony.  Why that qualified them as being safe company, I still don't know.

Fan club presidenting for the Preps led down paths I never dreamed of even with my fertile imagination.  My deluging local and national dj's (at night I could pick up radio signals from New York, Boston, and Cleveland if the wind was blowing in the right direction) with phone calls and letters to play the Preps every new single and lp.  This caught the attention of the Capitol Records' head executive for the Great Lakes area, Tom Gelardi.  He quickly appointed me a one-person test market and for years sent me recordings of the label's new releases.  I got to hear the Beach Boys and the Beatles before other teens.  Tom comp'd me into concerts and put my name at the top of backstage area lists for other Capitol artists that concertized in the Motor City.

On my own I earned an official press pass and wrote for various teen publications.  I contacted recording labels and wound up meeting and interviewing other heart throbs, among them Frankie Avalon, Fabian, and Jan & Dean.  That first contact with the Michigan State Fair's Publicity Department also kept me on the fair's "Go through Security, No Questions Asked; Access to All Areas" list for years.  When girls on the other side of the sturdy chain link fences outside the trailer/dressing room area enviously screamed at me "How'd you get in there?" I flipped out my press pass nonchalantly and shrugged off their whines and bribery offers.  I was, after all, "on duty."  Now that I think of it though, and after years of analysis and psychological studies when I was going for my master's degree, subliminally I was flipping them the bird.  It was a real thrill to be hobnobbing with Frankie, Fabe, and even The Oldest Teenager himself - Dick Clark.

Despite all the writing I did for the Preps, the fan club, the teen papers and magazines, I decided I'd major in Theatre Arts in college.  It was the round of applause and multitudinous kudos I received as a high school freshman when, costumed in a pair of yellow/black/white harlequin capri pants, one of my dad's white shirts tied at the waist, in bare feet and wearing an honest-to-gosh beach hat just like in "Gidget," I lip-synched "26 Miles."  Then and there I turned away from becoming a full-time journalist into an actress/singer.  I loved the smell of greasepaint more than I did printers ink.

My schedule didn't allow time for running the fan club by the time I got to Eastern Michigan University, but the Preps and I stayed in close contact.  When they appeared at EMU, I was there front row.  The Preps were starving after the show, and so was I (too nervous to eat, being with them again).  I suggested The Gingham Inn, an upscale local hangout for EMU/Ypsilanti and University of Michigan/Ann Arbor students.  Instead of orange and grape soda I downed four Slow Gin Fizzes very quickly.  (Nerves, it was nerves.  Okay - I wasn't paying, that was a factor too.)  My imbibing prompted quiet "She grown up, hasn't she!" comments from the Preps.  (I heard them though, and despite the hangover I got to class the next day.)

Variations of the group occurred, but Bruce Belland remained in my life.  Also, my adoration for the Preps never wavered.  When their touring with Henry Mancini's Orchestra brought them to other Michigan college campuses, I'd skip class and drive my Corvair to see them.  During my senior year the tour brought them to Michigan State University.  After the show, and even though it was a bit crowded in the Corvair, I chauffeured Bruce and the fifth Prep, Lincoln Mayorga, as well as a high school chum who was at MSU (I still needed a chaperone in case I fainted), to the nearby Big Boy's and then to their lodging at the Holiday Inn at the local airport.  The warm companionship made up my car's inefficient heating on that typically cold Michigan winter's eve.

After graduation and a brief stays in New York City and Chicago, I landed in California.  Actress/singer/writer - Hollywood was the place to get my triple-pronged career going.  The Preps had disbanded by that time.  In many ways Bruce Belland had become the big brother I'd never had.  By 1971, he and Dave Sommerville of The Diamonds formed a duo.  They put me on guest list when they were part of CBS' short-lived Tim Conway Show.  When Belland and Sommerville appeared at the famed Ice House in Pasadena, I was there too.  It still sent a lovely chill through me, walking past security guards at CBS, sitting in the best house seats watching and listening to Bruce and Dave.

Almost five years in Hollywood and I'd had enough of earthquakes, sunshine, and struggling to break into tv and movies.  I packed up, returned to Michigan and grad school at EMU, and decided The Big Apple was the place to pursue a legitimate theatrical and musical career.  Writing supplemented when acting and/or singing didn't quite meet the rent.  I eventually opted out of a classical/operatic career when I realized there wasn't any way I could warble Four Preps numbers in-between arias.  Smoky cabarets were more conducive to lyrics about big men with dreamy eyes who'd been met down by the station or on a tropical island in the middle of the ocean on a lazy summer night.

The 80s, the 90s, the Millennium came and went as did more versions of the Preps.  Bruce and Dave convinced Ed Cobb to regroup with Jim Pike of the Lettermen as the fourth Prep.    When they played Atlantic City, I rented a car and drove to see them.  During the show Bruce reminisced about the Preps career and pointed out their eternal fan club president.  I blushed and gulped and despite the passage of time, I was still a 14-year old dormouse in the presence of the Four Preps.  I shyly (but very professionally) took a bow when the spotlight focused on me at the ringside.  As Gidget herself would have said, "It was the absolute ultimate!"

The Preps have re-formed again - be still my beating heart (thanks to a terrific cardiologist, I hope that doesn't occur for a long time though).  I'd planned on being at Descanco Beach for the big shindig on the 15th.  A disintegrating back molar my dentist is replacing with an implant and dental insurance being what it isn't, I'll be sitting in my apartment.  Instead of Catalina and the Pacific, I'll be gazing at Manhattan and I-95.  But I'll put on re-mastered CDs.  Undoubtedly, goose bumps will crawl over me just like they did half a century ago as I listen to the Four Preps.
 The embroidered black skirt, the fan club newsletters, all the Preps paraphernalia - the scrapbooks and autographed pictures collected through the years, all were lost in a flood.  But they're there, the memories - permanently imbedded in my mind and heart. 
 Did I ever get to Catalina Island?  Yes, I did.  During my Hollywood days I sailed the 26 miles - not in a leaky old boat though, and one time the water wasn't so serene but I didn't care at all.  I breathed in the salty air.  And I did find it was a tropical heaven covered with trees and (grown-up) boys.

Romance?  Yes, I found that too.  I fell in love with the island itself.  It's an unavoidable side effect of Four Preps-itis.  Incurable, I'll never grow out of it either.  I don't want to.

- AnneMarie Lowell