By Crystal Garcia
TERRE HAUTE — When a man asked Marcella Herndon, 74, if she would be interested in posing for a photo to advertise beer, she was a little skeptical.
“I said [yes] as long as I can wear clothes and bring somebody with me,” said Herndon of Markham, Ill., who was 18 at the time, working as an elevator operator in Shultz Department Store in downtown Terre Haute.
The Terre Haute Brewing Co.’s Champaign Velvet Beer was the first national brewery to use both white and black models in an advertising campaign in 1952, according to the Terre Haute Brewery Web site.
Known as “Marni Tressele, popular night club entertainer” in the ad, Herndon received $15 for her services, according to a copy of her original contract dated May 8, 1951.
aHerndon said the whole photo shoot took about 30 minutes and was nothing like shoots now because she wore her own clothes and did her own hair and makeup.
With the exception of the flower in Herndon’s hair, everything else was hers, she said.
While some of the ads with Herndon on them showed up around Terre Haute, she said many of them went to Nashville, Tenn.
Soon after modeling for the brewery, Herndon met the man who would become her husband on a blind date in Chicago, she said.
They married in Terre Haute and moved to Chicago where she modeled a lot at hair and clothing fashion shows for churches, she said.
“It was fun and then my husband said, ‘That’s enough,’” Herndon said with a laugh.
After a job in sales, she became a chemist for Eastman Kodak, testing the chemicals used to process film for mostly movies, but also 8-mm film, slides and prints, she said.
In 1987, Eastman Kodak relocated out of Chicago, so Herndon became a bus driver for disabled adults and children.
When her husband died in 1996, she went into the ministry full time, she said, and entered full-time retirement in 1998.
Although “retired,” Herndon is active as a certified lay minister at Ascension-St. Susanna Roman Catholic Church, an officer for the Archdiocese’s Council of Catholic Women and a fourth degree member of the Knights and Ladies of Peter Claver, in which she holds the position as faithful navigator — similar to a president. She also volunteers for the archdioceses with the office of evangelization.
She spends her summers visiting her five children and 11 grandchildren, she said.
Herndon enjoyed her time as a model for the Terre Haute Brewing Co. and still is able to have fun with her picture today.
“It was nice. It was a privilege,” she said. “… I take it to groups that we have when we’re talking about old times and they say, ‘What? That is you.’”
Crystal Garcia can be reached at (812) 231-4271 or crystal.garcia@tribstar.com.
