Popular Purcell Elementary School Secretary Jackie Suchy has been selected to be the Grand Marshal of the 2024 PHS Homecoming Parade.

Suchy has worked for the Purcell School District for the past 33 years, serving the last 15 years as secretary for PES after taking over when Angie Wallace retired in 2009.

The 1979 PHS graduate started off as the school nurse, the job Robin Sheehy has now, and worked in the lunch program. She also did some secretary duties as a receptionist.

She was hired by then elementary principal Pat Frankenberg. She has also worked for principals Sherry Davis, Tammy Dillard and now Cindy Stone.

Being the secretary at the elementary school is like being a surrogate mother to 379 kids in pre-K through second grade.

Suchy told The Purcell Register in a 2023 interview the challenge is “loving the kids and taking care of them but knowing at the end of the day they are not mine,” she said at the time.

She also said in that same interview that one of her fondest moments is when she runs into a former student as an adult out in the community.

“It makes your heart happy,” she said.

She may run into a few of them at the parade.

The parade begins at 1:30 and will proceed east down Main Street.

The coronation ceremony begins at 6:20 p.m. at Conger Field.