No Ceiling Season 3 Guest: Norma Champion

Local women share their journey to the top of their professions and the challenges and triumphs they faced along the way. They’re rewriting the script on success and there’s no ceiling.

Norma Champion is my guest on the ninth episode of No Ceiling, Season 3. Norma’s career started in the 1950s, hosting a children’s television show on KY3. After returning to school to finish her degree, she worked as a professor teaching broadcasting at Evangel University. In a twist to her career, she was elected to Springfield City Council in 1987, which launched a decadeslong run in politics, including as a member of the Missouri House of Representatives and Senate. There, she addressed issues relating to health care, family and children, and education. She’s accumulated a long list of honors, but she says reflecting on her career now at 90 years old, it’s the memories around the personal connections she’s built that are the most significant. In this episode, Norma and I talk about how her faith influences her life, the impact of the death of her first husband and losing her vision, and what she still hopes to accomplish.

Below is an excerpt from our conversation.

Christine Temple: I want to start with your time on the “Children’s Hour” on KY3. Many people in this community know you as Aunt Norma. It clearly worked out because you hosted the show for almost 30 years, but I understand that it was kind of an accident that you got the job.
Champion: I had a baby, a year old, and I’d always been very, very active in the community and just different kinds of things, and I was getting antsy. I’m a believer in following my instincts and following the guidance of God. I just thought one day, television is so interesting; I think I will call the television station. It was a crazy thing to do, but it didn’t seem crazy to me. I’ll just talk to the manager and see if I can’t come out and volunteer and learn television. Nobody volunteered to do television. So, I called Carl Fox, who was the manager at the time, and he said he was going out of town, so it was about three weeks before my appointment. By the time I got there, they were looking for somebody to do “Children’s Hour.” Mr. Fox hadn’t really thought about the fact that it wasn’t even open when I made the appointment, and he said, “I guess you came to audition for ‘Children’s Hour.’” And I said, “Yeah, what’s ‘Children’s Hour’?” In my head, you know. I had not seen it at the time. I auditioned in his office without even being in front of a camera, and he said, “Pretend you’re selling me a tube of toothpaste.” And then he pulled a book off his shelf and he said, “Read this to me.” He called me and asked me to do the show for a few days, and in about a week he said, “The show is yours if you want it.”

Temple: You started this show when you were in your mid-20s. How did you learn how to do all these things?
Champion: I learned by doing and with the crew helping me and knowing what to do. I started working with children when I was about 16. I learned how to talk to children. I didn’t know anything about television, and I learned how to do it on television from just thinking about if I were at home, what would I want to see? I hear from people all the time because now they’re adults. I had this young man, not too young but to me they seem young, and he said, “‘Children’s Hour’ really meant a lot to me … because you were my friend and you knew me.” I said, “That’s wonderful, because that’s exactly what I wanted.”

Related: No Ceiling from SBJ Podcasts