Behind the Headlines

By Paula Wethington

I grew up in a city where little girls didn’t typically dream of becoming Miss America. The preliminary contest in my hometown had an off and on production history, and I had only one friend who entered. And I had met Kaye Lani Rafko Wilson of Monroe, Miss America 1988, only once when I covered an event she spoke at in Ohio.

So the Miss America glitz and glamour were new to me when I moved to Monroe in early 2000.

I quickly learned the Miss Monroe County pageant was a big part of this community’s traditions and history – especially when I saw the reaction Mrs. Wilson got during an event I covered in Temperance.

One of my friends, Nancy Chorzempa, was a contestant for Miss Monroe 2000.

I told my daughter, “Come on, let’s go cheer for Nancy and see what this is all about.”

We bought our tickets, and a program so we could follow along. Someone gave us a noisemaker to cheer on our favorite contestant. My daughter and I did our own critiques of the talent routines and stage presentations.

But watching the pageant was like watching a sports game where I wasn’t familiar with the rules. When the finalists were announced, I knew there had to be more to picking the queen than what the contestants did on pageant night. What was it?

In recent years, I noticed that whomever served as Miss Monroe County attended an increasing number of charity events and autograph appearances. Dozens of girls were participating each year in the Little Miss Monroe County contest. And the teen division split off from Little Miss Monroe County in 2006 — so now there were three pageants.

I thought it was an appropriate time to do a story beyond the annual profiles of the candidates and queen.

But 2006 was too busy of a summer for me to take on a project. I waited until this spring to make the story pitch.

When I got asked, “What are you going to focus on?” I said, “I don’t know yet.”

My goal was to talk to as many people as possible and see what happened.

During the summer, I filled three reporter notebooks with notes from interviews and pageant rehearsals. The pageant board gave me two binders with pageant instructions and contestant profiles. And to get a feel for the local pageant’s history, I read through piles of clippings in our newsroom library.

The scene that I describe at the ending of the main story that will be printed in Sunday’s edition of The Monroe Evening News happened on technical rehearsal night.

While the contestants were in dress rehearsal, I was sitting at a computer, working on a story draft.

During the pageant production, I stayed back stage. I joked around with the stage crew and talked to the contestants as they prepped for stage appearances.

“Are you having fun?” several people asked me.

Yes, I had fun that night.

Then again, it wasn’t my daughter who stood on that stage, seeking a crown.

I was just waiting to get a quote for the newspaper.