Jr. Miss Grand Coulee Dam

Family Search's question from May 20th was: What are some of the stories you loved hearing from your mother’s youth? From your grandmothers’ younger days?

We are a picture family. We love taking pictures and we have a lot of photo albums. Something that I loved doing as a girl, and what I still love as an adult, is to open up our photo albums and yearbooks and look through them reminiscing. Whenever I looked through my mom's albums, I loved the pictures of her in dance costumes, gymnastics outfits, and cheerleader uniforms; but my absolute favorite was pictures of her in a big beautiful pink dress with a crown on her head and a sash across her chest that read "Jr. Miss Grand Coulee Dam." (My mom is the girl on the left)

The Jr. Miss pageant is a scholarship program for high school age girls. My grew up in a tiny town called Grand Coulee Dam in the state of Washington. She entered the Jr. Miss pageant and competed in the following categories: academics, physical fitness, pose and appearance, talent, and judges interview.

For academics each candidates GPA was submitted. For poise and appearance each candidate walked across the stage in an evening gown while their biography was read. For physical fitness they were taught a choreographed routine ahead of time and performed it all together. My mom said it was like an aerobics routine. The judges interviews were done prior to the pageant, and were done privately with each candidate. The talent portion was done on stage. My mom danced a jazz routine to "We Are The Kids In America" by Kim Wilde.

My mom won the pageant! She was crowned Jr. Miss Grand Coulee Dam, and represented her town in parades throughout that summer. She went on to compete in Jr. Miss Washington, and she was second runner up!

My mom still has her crown, sash, and dress. Growing up I loved trying them on. I actually would have loved to wear her dress to one of my proms, but unfortunately my mom and I have very different bodies, and I stopped fitting into her dress at around 14/15 years old. But I did wear her sash with one of my prom dresses as a Halloween costume. :)

I attempted to compete in the Jr. Miss Provo pageant when I was in high school; but the year I signed up for it only one other girl also signed up, so they cancelled it. I kind of wish they would have just done it anyway. I mean, both of us would have ended up with a crown and a spot on the float. Oh well...