“Hi Holly, uh, you don’t really know me, and I’ve got mono, buuut, I hear you don’t have a date to the Homecoming dance. Would you like to go with me?” physics teacher Kirk Davis, then a 16-year-old junior, stammered into the phone in 1974.
About five weeks into the football season at Natrona County High School in Casper, Wyo., Davis was at an early dinner with his coach and teammates, as was tradition before every game. Davis hadn’t been playing since he contracted mononucleosis the second week of the season, but he was still spending time with and supporting his teammates.
“For Homecoming, the coach always invited the Homecoming queen and her court,” Davis said.
Davis was enjoying his meal like everyone else, having casual conversation with his teammates. Meanwhile, the coach was sitting at the head of the table, sandwiched between the Homecoming queen and the first runner up.
“He asked the homecoming queen, ‘Well, who’s your date for the Homecoming dance?’” Davis said.
To the coach’s surprise, the queen responded that she didn’t have a date. The coach was in further disbelief after find out that the first runner up didn’t have a date either. In 1974, the Homecoming queen could not go to the Homecoming dance unescorted, Davis said.
The coach set it upon himself to fix the situation.
“He goes to me and one of my good buddies who he also knows has mono cause we’re not playing and he goes, ‘Davis, Schwartz, come here,’” Davis said. “‘The Homecoming queen and her first attendant, they don’t have dates, that’s unacceptable, you have to ask them to the Homecoming dance.’”
Davis and his friend, Bill Schwartz, were caught completely off guard and tried to back out of their coach’s demand, but the coach was persistent.
“Really tough, right? I got mono, this is the goddess homecoming queen who’s a senior, I’m a junior, I don’t even know her at all, so what do we do?” Davis said.
Davis and his friend decided to play rock-paper-scissors to determine who would get to ask the homecoming queen, who they’d heard was quite nice. The first attendant, on the other hand, was perceived to be a little stuck up. Davis won, and as a result got to ask the homecoming queen.
“I was over at my buddy’s house. We were sitting around like ‘you call’ ‘no you call’ ‘no you call,’” Davis said. “Everything had to be on landline phone, nobody had text or cell phones or any of that junk.”
Eventually Davis volunteered to call first. The Homecoming queen’s, Holly Heizer’s, parents picked up the phone and Davis asked for Holly. Then he presented his case.
The line went quiet. Then, finally, Holly responded with “sure.”
Davis was relieved. At his high school there were about 700 students per class, so students didn’t have many friends in other classes.
“I knew this girl in the hallways, maybe seen her around, but I certainly didn’t know her and she had never spoken one word to me [nor] me to her in the hallways up until then,” Davis said.
Schwartz called the first attendant, Terri Root, and pleaded a similar case as Davis had, but he was not as lucky. Root rejected Schwartz’s offer, and Davis went to his first Homecoming with the Homecoming queen.
“I ended up taking Holly Heizer to the Homecoming dance and then we ended up dating afterwards. We ended up having a good time,” Davis said. “It was the first time I ever had to ask somebody to a dance or a date or something that was not my idea. That’s for darn sure.”