Charm, Dignity, Experience Win Tiara at Different Kind of Pageant
Nervous pageant contestants whisper among themselves as one woman walks to the microphone to answer questions from the judges. Radiant in flowing pink chiffon, she gives her best advice to young people today:
“Get your education. Be honest. And do unto others as you wish to be done by. That’s what my mother taught me when I was a child.”
For Mary Jane Rich and her fellow Carson pageant competitors, that was a long time ago. But it’s what qualifies them for this new type of South Bay pageant, where senior citizens show that being young isn’t everything.
No tap dancing, juggling or opera singing under these spotlights. Audiences won’t see a swimsuit all night.
Instead, the women--and, in some rounds of the pageant, the men--show examples of their best handicrafts, read original poetry, talk about their lives or just try to make the audience laugh.
At the first of six preliminary rounds before the grand pageant in February, life experience won out. Carson Retirement Center’s oldest contestant, 84-year-old Estelle McGowan, took the tiara on Wednesday night.
“Just because you’re a senior citizen doesn’t mean you lose your talents,” pageant coordinator Mary Lynn Ahsmuhs said. “You don’t have to sing and dance to have a lot to offer.”
Ahsmuhs, a co-owner of the Beltone Hearing Aide Center in Torrance, said she recently moved to Los Angeles from Oklahoma, where retirement pageants are an elaborate, statewide tradition.
The enthusiasm of the Oklahoma contestants prompted her to try this year to create a similar program in the South Bay.
“You really don’t have to see performing talents. Hobbies are a God-given talent they can do with their hands,” Ahsmuhs said. “All we ask is that they do something that shows their expertise.”
McGowan, a professional seamstress for more than 60 years, took the honors by showing off both her sunny personality and her colorful crochet projects. She sells her crafts but charges only what the yarn cost, “because I love to make people happy.”
During the group interview with judges before the pageant, McGowan was far from a picture of intense competition. Her salt-and-pepper hair neatly braided and a silk-flower corsage pinned to her favorite blue dress, she sat crocheting contentedly with yarn that flowed from a knitting bag she had made for the front of her metal walker.
She stopped her needlework long enough to tell judges why she spends so much time with her crochet hooks and yarn.
“I can’t do nothing else, so it’s a nice pastime,” McGowan explained, laughing lightly. “I pray every morning for the Lord to let me do something useful, and people like these things, so I do this.”
During the pageant, McGowan, who is bent from arthritis, shuffled carefully to the microphone. She showed off the bright orange and pink blocks of an afghan in the making, purple and white booties and a pink butterfly refrigerator magnet.
Carole Ware, activities director for the Carson Retirement Center, said it took some talking to get residents interested in the pageant.
“At first they were saying, ‘Beauty pageant? We’re no beauties,’ ” Ware said. “We wanted to remind them they still have charm, they still have dignity. The things they used to do, they still can do.”
Eventually, seven women agreed to participate. One become ill just before the pageant and had to drop out.
The six at the pageant seemed a little perplexed by the fuss.
“I don’t know what I’m doing here. I don’t have a talent but to laugh,” 60-year-old Dot Spindler, a retired bookkeeper, told the audience.
The three judges--Andrea Reeder, administrator of the Miss Torrance Pageant; Art Alvarado of Bay Harbor Hospital and Eric Bennett, an account executive for Senior World Magazine--read recommendations from center staff members and chatted with contestants before making their decision.
Ahsmuhs told them to rate contestants in the areas of hobby or talent, personality, contributions to their retirement center and life philosophy.
When the time came to award the crown, there were none of the tears and squeals common to television beauty pageants. The winners were announced in traditional style--runners-up first.
Despite her modesty, Spindler won the second runner-up award--a beauty makeover at a local salon.
As first runner-up, Francis Lapham--who told the audience about the porcelain and rag dolls she makes--won a free dinner at Denny’s in Torrance.
McGowan, the center’s new queen, will enjoy a free dinner at Tony Roma in Redondo Beach.
Contestants greeted the pronouncements with calm, pleased smiles but had little to say afterward.
Five more preliminary pageants will be staged in the next two months at Huntington Retirement Center, Vermont Retirement Center, Torrance Retirement Center, Villa Sorrento and Pacific Inn in Torrance. The final pageant will be at Pacific Inn on Feb. 10.
“We are starting out small, but we know this is going to catch on,” Ahsmuhs said. “You can just see a gleam in their eye. They think, ‘People are going to get to see and notice me because of what I’ve done in my life.’ You can’t match that.”