Being a Role Model

It hits you that you really are a role model when you are standing in line for fast food after basketball practice and a girl around six comes up behind you and says, "Aren't you Miss St Joseph?" Her grandma was with her. I got to explain that I had been Miss St Joseph's Outstanding Teen, and that now my title is Miss Heartland's Outstanding Teen, and of course I invited her to check into the Misses of Missouri program. So, even when you aren't wearing a crown and sash, you are still a role model and are still representing the Miss America system.

I am always blown away when little girls read the Miss America logo on the sash, and immediately think I am Miss America, as I explain someday I hope to be, but right now I am a local title holder, it reminds me that we are all out there representing the program. Miss America can't be everywhere, but we can represent those four points where we go. I think a good example of that is how when we were parking cars in Hannibal at the Folklife Festival and collecting for CMN, a gentleman came by and donated. He didn't even park in our lot! He commented that he was surprised to know that young women would work so hard to get to the Miss America stage. He really hadn't realized that girls work hard as local title holders for years sometimes, competing at state, then work hard there before taking to the Miss America stage. He said, "So someday when I see you walk across the Miss America stage, I can say, 'Hey, I saw that girl collecting money in a parking lot for CMN in Hannibal, MO." I do hope he can say that, and more importantly, I know he gained a better understanding of what Miss America is all about!