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The band at the Mayor's Inaugural Ball just had finished playing Once in Love with Amy when first lady Amy Minick Peterson stepped into the elevator with her three sisters. Bedecked in ball gowns, the fun-loving sisters gave her the royal treatment. "As soon as I got on, they all bowed and curtsied. And I'm yelling, ‘Would you guys stop it, please!" Peterson laughs at her sisters' antics.

The frivolity of the evening marked the culmination of a two-year mayoralty campaign won by her husband, Bart Peterson, making him the 47th mayor in the history of Indianapolis and the first Democratic mayor in 32 years.

The man who made building better neighborhoods a campaign issue is married to the proverbial "girl next door." The warm and vivacious 42-year-old brunette was born Jan. 26, 1958, in Oak Harbor, Ohio, a little town 30 miles east of Toledo, near Cedar Point. "Dad was the only physician in town the whole time we were growing up. He even delivered babies. So he was gone a lot. My mom was a very strong, independent woman who kept the household going," she says. Likewise, Peterson almost single-handedly kept her own household functioning during the long days of the political campaign.

Being the first lady of the 12th largest city in the United States is a tall order. But the cheerful, energetic Peterson knows how to fill an order. "I manned the drive-up window at the Port Clinton (Ohio) McDonald's for two summers. In fact, it was the first McDonald's in the Midwest that had a drive-up window," she says proudly. The confirmed night owl gleefully took the night shift so she could hang out and sunbathe on Lake Erie during the day.

She was a majorette, then head majorette at Oak Harbor High School, and also was on the student council, acted in plays, served on the yearbook staff, and edited the newspaper. Her love of writing led her to the University of Missouri, where she obtained a journalism degree. As a news editorial major, she discovered that next to editing, she preferred medical reporting.

Her chance to cover health issues came in Atlanta, Ga., during the summers of her junior and senior years in college. "I had an internship through Emory University where I worked at Emory's Grady Hospital Family Planning Program. During my first summer there, I worked on a publication where I got to write about new contraceptive technology. During the second summer, I wrote for the Atlanta Journal.

"After spending my first summer working in the area of family planning, I realized the need to educate people. So when I went back to the University of Missouri I served on the campus Human Sexuality Education Panel where we educated students about making wise decisions, being aware that you have choices to not get sexually involved. It was not only about birth control," she states. "I spoke to students in sororities, fraternities and dorms," says Peterson, who actually enjoys public speaking.

The popular Chi Omega Sorority member was elected president of her house during her junior year. "It was an honor. But what I really liked was that it was not a stereotyped house. We had a mix of women. … and everybody got along.

"While living in Atlanta, I met a Harvard grad who was pre-Bart. He was in medical school at the University of Michigan so we carried on a long-distance romance for two years while I was at the University of Missouri," she reveals candidly. Wanting to be near her beau, after graduation she took a job as a community relations associate at the Catherine McAuley Health Center in Ann Arbor, Mich. "It was a great job," she says. "And I immediately got into health care public relations. Back then, they didn't call it marketing. But it was the prelude to marketing. I did community events, edited an internal newsletter for employees, wrote an external publication and annual reports … I did all the writing you could possibly do in that job. I always wanted to be a reporter so I felt like I sold out to make more money in public relations. But the reality was that I could support myself in public relations."

While she fell in love with the world of health care, public relations, and marketing, her romance took a tumble. "When he chose a residency in Boston, we went our separate ways, realizing that we were not going to get married. I had been dating him for four years and I was devastated," she admits.

"That fall, my friend from Chicago called to tell me that she was getting married. She advised me that if I didn't want to drive to the wedding alone, I should contact her fiancé's friend and fraternity brother, Bart Peterson. I said that I might call him but I wasn't anxious to ride in a car for five hours with a guy that I didn't know. Well, I finally decided I really wanted to go to the wedding and I called Bart. We hooked up over the phone, he picked me up at my apartment, and we really hit it off that weekend because we had a lot in common. He was this little preppy law student back then … in his jeans and Bass Wejuns and white button-down shirt. He couldn't have been any more clean cut," she laughs, brown eyes sparkling.

"We connected that weekend, but when we came back I thought ‘This isn't going to work. He is in a whole different world. He's a law student and I'm a working woman,' " she recalls. "But he called me the following week and asked if I wanted to go to the driving range with him. He knew that I was taking golf lessons but I thought I must not rate real high. A date to go to a driving range on a Sunday night! We still joke about that and he tells everybody that he thought it was the coolest date!

"Our second date was really strange, too. In the fall, law students interview with law firms. People from Ice Miller Donadio & Ryan came to Ann Arbor and made him an offer. They took us out and I'm like, ‘This is very strange. I don't even know him and here he's making this big decision with me here.'"

While Bart's love mended Amy's disillusioned heart, he still was healing from a horrible accident that occurred on an Ann Arbor street a few weeks before Christmas in 1981, before she knew him. Bart was walking across the street at dusk on his way home from law school classes when he was hit by a car, causing multiple injuries — a broken arm and leg, a shattered left elbow, broken teeth, a battered face and contusions. Nevertheless, he went back to school using crutches during the winter semester. "I didn't meet him until it was time to take the metal plate out of his arm. And that was awful," she winces.

Despite his trauma, he had a plan even then! "We kept dating until he finished school that year, but things happened quickly," she says. "[The following] October, he brought me to Indianapolis to meet his family. I had no idea that he had already told his mom, ‘This is it.'"

Bart and Amy were married in Ann Arbor's Zion Lutheran Church Nov. 12, 1983. The Peterson clan "made me feel part of the family from the first time I met them. Bart's parents are absolutely wonderful people who embrace the in-laws as their own."

(Bart's parents, Howard and Lori Peterson, launched the family's real estate-based business — the Precedent Companies — in 1967. They were major financial supporters of their son's mayoral campaign.)

After their honeymoon in Cancun, Peterson joined her romantic bridegroom in Indianapolis and started her move up the health care career ladder. From 1984-1988, she was marketing communications manager and a marketing associate at Community Hospitals, then was Community's director of marketing communications from 1988-1997.

On her 30th birthday, Peterson's present was learning she was pregnant with their now 11-year-old daughter Meg. Bart is one of five kids and she is one of four. "We always wanted three kids, but I had two miscarriages after Meg was born." They consider themselves blessed to have Meg, who is a fifth-grade student at Park Tudor School.

Admitting that "my career is tremendously important to me and always will be," Peterson returned to work after Meg was born. The family's child-care dilemma was handled by a nanny for the first two years, then they put Meg in a daycare center located in a family-owned business. A doting and concerned working mother, Peterson was glad the daycare center had only 20 kids.

Five years ago, tragedy hit Peterson upside the head. Her parents had divorced during her freshman year in college and in 1986 her mother, Joan Minick, moved to Indianapolis. She was an interior designer at The Design Studio in the Fashion Mall. But then disaster hit. "My mother got sick five Christmases ago with pancreatic cancer," says Peterson, tears welling up in her eyes. "She moved in with us six weeks before she died. My mom was my best friend and I'm so glad that I could take care of her."

Her mother and father had been high school sweethearts. Joan Minick, a practicing nurse before she had children, never remarried. But Amy's dad has been married twice since their divorce. "He's still a practicing physician at age 74 ... and married again to yet another nurse," laughs Peterson. "He always marries nurses!"

The jocular father-daughter teasing goes both ways. Her father is a staunch Republican. Feigning horror, he tells his daughter, "I can't believe you are a Democrat!"

"But he's very proud of me and very excited," she says. "I am the third of four daughters and the Minick name will not go on forever. I was a Minick for 25 years before I got married and I felt like I should be able to keep my name after I was married. Bart strongly supported me," she asserts. So she insists on being called Amy Minick Peterson.

The busy wife and mother handles cooking by relying on healthy carry-out meals. "But I like to cook when I have lots of time — which is almost never." She does claim to make a crowd-pleasing ratatouille, though.

How does the busy couple handle division of labor within the marriage? "I'm happy if he takes out the trash and changes the light bulbs. But he's picking up more of the load now."

As anyone involved in politics knows, some election days are better than others. Unfortunately, Election Day 1995 was quite memorable. "I was leading the marketing campaign for the proposed merger of Community Hospital and St. Vincent Hospital," Peterson recalls, "and I was having lots of headaches, but I wrote it off to stress." On that November election day, she woke up and took a shower. "But I felt strange. Bart had already left the house to work at our precinct, but he was to return home by 7 a.m. so I could go to a 7:30 a.m. meeting.

"When he came home, he found me back in bed. I had suffered what turned out to be a seizure and I had apparently fallen. I had an abrasion on my face. And I had bitten my tongue, which was bleeding. We both realized that something had gone terribly wrong. Bart immediately called my father. My dad diagnosed it over the phone. He told Bart, ‘It's probably a brain tumor. But don't tell her. Just get her to the hospital.'

"At the hospital, the doctors came in and told me that the CAT scan revealed a brain tumor. I was in total denial. I thought, ‘Who are they talking to?' I was put on medication to reduce the swelling in my brain and had surgery nine days later for what turned out to be a benign meningioma.

"My head was shaved and I knew I wasn't going to have hair for five to six months. So I got a wig, but I never really liked it." She found some neat scarves (designed by Jenelle Reber of Eaton, Ind.) at Jacobson's and bought a lot of them. Later, she passed them on to a breast cancer patient at Community.

She's certain the tumor heightened her olfactory sense — "I can smell gas leaks," she laughs — but says she's had no other residual effects from the tumor.

"After experiencing the brain tumor, I did a lot of soul-searching. I realized that life is really precious and that I wanted more time to be with my family. So I fashioned a job — with all the things I love to do — and I've been on contract with Community Hospital for three years." She works 20 hours a week as a marketing consultant.

With her boundless energy, she is taking on the role of first lady of Indianapolis. Her predecessor, Margaret Goldsmith, graciously has given her some advice, but those are conversations Peterson considers private. She won't betray that confidence and she's not worried about her friends blabbing. "I've always been sensitive to being appropriate," explains the classy lady. "I grew up in a protocol-oriented family."

Protocol is evident when the trained reporter and editor refuses to discuss her involvement in the writing of the 95-page Peterson Plan. Oh, come on, Amy. From one writer to another … ? Her flashing brown eyes betray her humble denial. "Okay! Okay! I helped edit it!" she confesses with pride.

Her husband's mayoral ambitions were born about seven years ago, she recalls. Two years ago, then, he began exploring the possibility. The rest is history.

Peterson's confessions do not extend to any future political plans. And she gets truly annoyed when asked if her husband might some day run for governor. "Why do people always want to talk about the next step? He's holding the only office he ever wanted," she protests. Her love and loyalty are obvious — and reciprocated. It's apparent in the way they look at each other. Not the photo-op, phony look, but genuine.

Circle City's new drum majorette is in motion, planning how she will lead the citizens' band. "I want to have an impact in the areas of health promotion and education — and issues dealing with children and women who are at risk," she declares.

While Mayor Bart Peterson holds the keys to the city, first lady Amy Peterson well may have the lock on the hearts of the people.

What's A Meningioma?

"A meningioma is a benign (noncancerous) brain tumor that has its origin in the outer covering of the brain, called the meninges (men-NIN-jeez). The seriousness of a meningioma is related to its size and location. Even a small tumor may cause serious disruption of function in certain parts of the brain but cause no symptoms or signs in another part. In addition, a meningioma in some locations may make its surgical removal extremely difficult, if not impossible. Even if a large tumor can be totally removed, there may not be a return of normal function of areas of the brain that had been previously damaged by pressure from the adjacent meningioma.

"Diagnosis of the problem usually requires an evaluation that includes imaging studies such as a CT or MRI scan and consultation; with a neurologist and neurosurgeon. Treatment decisions are based on the location and extent of the tumor."

(Source: Mayo Clinic)