Bern Nadette Stanis aka "Thelma" Archives

Hello World!!!

Me and Thelma!!!

Her signature!!!

I admit it…I’m a total Stan when it comes to “Thelma” from the hit ’70s show “Good Times.” When I was around 7 or 8 years old, I desperately searched for images on television that affirmed and celebrated black beauty…In the early ’80s, those were hard to come by…While the white girls in my classes looked up to Jill (Farrah Fawcett) on “Charlie’s Angels” and “Daisy Duke” from “The Dukes of Hazzard,” I looked up to “Thelma.” Next to my mother, she represented everything I wanted for myself in the future: beauty, brains, strong family ties, a loving relationship with a fine husband and a determination to make it in this world despite all of its challenges.

I do think this pic looks like me...

When I got older, I was delighted that I got curvy like my beauty icon. And one Halloween in my ’20s, I even decided to dress as her for a Halloween party. (If you go to my ‘How’ page on this blog, you can see that pic…) I smiled for days when two guys nearly back -to-back told me that I favored “Thelma” just a few years ago. One of those guys is an artist who draws wonderful portraits so I took that as a huge compliment!!!

So you can imagine how excited I was when I found out Bern Nadette Stanis aka “Thelma” would be at the Sweet Auburn festival last weekend. I did not know how I was going to find her among the throngs of people at Sweet Auburn on Saturday, but I desperately hoped it would happen. As R and I walked through the crowd, I overheard a woman say, “That’s ‘Thelma’ back there.” My neck turned nearly 360 degrees. “Where,” I said, forgetting my manners. “Back in that booth just back there,” the woman said as she pointed behind us. Forgetting that R was with me, I bulldozed my way through the people until there she was…the dream of my little girlhood…

Me being a total Stan!

I went up right to her and stammered something about her being beautiful, and she smiled and simply said, “Thank you.” Then I paid $15 to have my picture taken with her and an autograph…As we got close to each other, she said, “You are so cute.” I felt like was levitating…THELMA SAID I WAS CUTE…It came from her own lips…Since she opened the door, I walked right in…”Ms. Stanis, some people have told me that I look like you. I don’t know if that’s true, but I took it as a compliment,” I said quickly. She looked at me closely and then said, “I can see that.” I don’t know if she meant it, but it made me feel good anyway. R said I don’t look like her…Maybe not…but a girl can dream, can’t she?

I’m such a Stan, I even took a picture with her daughter Brittany…