This Maine teacher skipped school 50 years ago to meet the Beatles
When the Beatles made their U.S. television debut on Ed Sullivan’s show in 1964, Diane Soule was screaming at her television screen along with young women across the nation.
Her bedroom was plastered with their pictures, like tens of thousands of other bedrooms around the world. Like millions of other teenage girls in the 1960s, she fantasized about marrying a Beatle — she was a “Paul girl” — or at least being his girlfriend.
In many ways, Soule was and is a typical Beatles fan. But in one important way, she is different from most: She met them. “It’s hard to believe that was 50 years ago, to me,” said Soule, a retired fifth-grade teacher who lives in Rangeley.
Soule was 15 on Aug. 18, 1966, when she skipped school with a friend with the intention of spending the day at Suffolk Downs in Boston to see the Beatles play there that evening. A piece of inside information from the friend’s uncle, a Boston police officer, would change their lives: He said the band was staying at the Somerset Hotel, not the Exeter as everyone had been told.
Even though the hotel’s doorman told them the band wasn’t there, Soule and her friend persisted until a row of limousines arrived. Soule rushed Paul McCartney’s car, and he rolled down the window. “Half an hour, 40 minutes later and Paul was out on the balcony, and he was waving at us, like ‘Come on up,’” said Soule. “He sent down their manager, Neil Aspinall. He said, ‘The boys said you two can come up, if you want to.’”
By: Christopher Cousins
Source: Bangor Daily News
