On Thursday, she was honored with the Distinguished Citizen Award by the Sullivan County Legislature. “She is a tireless champion of the Sullivan Catskills, and I couldn’t be prouder to call her a neighbor and friend. She is the best ambassador anyone can ask for,” said Legislature Chairman Luis Alvarez.
“It’s a great honor, Jackie, to be able to present you with this certificate on behalf of all of us here,” Alvarez said. “And as you can see, we all know all of stories about you already. And on behalf of the body of legislators of Sullivan County, in recognition of an incredible life well lived.”
Well, maybe we don’t know all the stories. Horner reminisced at length about her years of living at Grossinger’s and rubbing shoulders with Milton Berle, Elizabeth Taylor, Debbie Reynolds, Errol Flynn, Judy Garland, Dinah Shore, and Jackie Gleason. Horner remembered that it was an associate of Eddie Fisher looking with some concern at how the young people were dancing and that led to coming up with the words “Dirty Dancing.”
“So it took all those years and different things that people said that I wrote down and utilized it, because it was real, it was true,” Horner said. “The things actually happened. And I thank you all so much for this pleasure and this honor.”
In the fall 1960, she remembers she taught a mother, father and their daughter how to dance and that little girl became the basis for the key character of “Baby” in “Dirty Dancing.”
And who was the real “Johnny” played by Patrick Swayze? Steve Schwartz, now 81.
She saw the movie just one time. “Once I saw it was put together exactly as it really was, I was fine,” Horner reflected on Thursday.
All was not sunshine, roses and dancing in her life.
As a young woman, a Navy lieutenant asked for her hand in marriage. She accepted and the couple entertained their wedding party-to-be on a yacht. The craft malfunctioned and exploded with Jackie being the sole survivor.
“I was burned to the waist,” she recalled. “My entire wedding party, 13 people, were dead in the Chesapeake Bay.”
Fortunately, her parents could not attend the yacht party and they visited her during her seven weeks of recovery in the hospital.
Horner danced at Grossinger’s Hotel from 1954 until it closed in 1986 and later married fellow Grossinger’s employee Lou Goldstein.
To this day Jackie still dances. “I can do splits, I’m still teaching, and I’m still here – just not kicking quite as high,” she said. “It’s wonderful exercise!”
