It Started out as a lark and ended up as a cause célèbre when Billerica (Massachusetts) Memorial High School senior Loretta Martin wrote under Ambition in the high school's yearbook, "To do a spread for Playboy." Her mother didn't mind. Her friends thought it was funny. But it was definitely not funny to Billerica Memorial officials, who deleted the line. Martin wasn't the only student whose statement was edited. of 550 students in her class, 110 made yearbook entries that were removed without their permission. Of those 110, however, only Loretta got mad enough to fight back. After unsuccessfully pleading her case with the yearbook's advisors, the student council and the principal, she went, accompanied by her mother, Beverly Trullo, to school superintendent Paul Heffernan. "He told me that if I were his daughter, he'd turn me over his knee and spank me," says Martin. Heffernan rejected her request that her ambition he reinstated, partially because "I didn't think that type of comment belonged in a yearbook. I deal with the parents of all the students, and I think they want a tasteful yearbook." Viewing the censorship as less a matter of good taste than an infringement on her freedom of speech, Martin enlisted the aid of the American Civil Liberties Union to apply legal pressure on her behalf. Soon the media got wind of her story, and one morning she woke up to find crews from NBC and CBS outside her home. ABC News interviewed her on the phone, as did a reporter from Good Morning America. Articles were written about her in newspapers around the country, and she was invited to appear on Donahue. Oh, yes. And we invited her to our Chicago studios to make her ambition come true. The Billerica yearbook was printed before Martin's A.C.L.U. lawyer had time to file an injunction to prevent its publication, so that case is moot. But Loretta learned a lot about life before it was over: "I learned how cruel people can be. A week after my story appeared in the Lowell, Massachusetts, Sun, I walked through the lunchroom and students were calling me names. I figured they were repeating what they'd heard their parents say. That's sad. But I also learned that there's a whole big world out there, and I'm glad to go into it as an adult." Welcome to the major leagues, Loretta.
