Torrance’s Chamber Turns Back on Beauty : Pageant: Business leaders and the City Council objected when officials changed the beauty contest title to Miss Torrance-Beach Cities.

For the first time in recent memory, there will be no smiling Miss Torrance waving to the crowds at the city’s annual Armed Forces Day Parade this May.

And future Torrance ribbon-cuttings and Torrance Area Chamber of Commerce social gatherings will be taking place without an official community beauty on hand.

The problem, according to city and chamber of commerce officials, is that the local beauty pageant simply isn’t very local anymore, and they have decided not to invite the reigning queen to attend any official functions.

Officials first began grumbling last year, when Cheryl Anthony of Gardena, the 1989 Miss Torrance, spent her first few days on the job trying to persuade the Torrance City Council not to withdraw its $750 in support. Council members, miffed that she and many previous winners had not been residents of their city, canceled the funding.

Afterward, pageant sponsors decided to change the name, adding the words “Beach Cities” to attract more contestants from other cities already included in the pageant’s area of eligibility.

This year’s Miss Torrance-Beach Cities, 19-year-old Connie Leamon, won her crown three weeks ago, but this week she found out her official appearances at chamber functions were over.

She also will not be getting an invitation to the city’s May 19 parade, an event characterized by previous queens as the highlight of their reigns.

Chamber officials say the addition of “Beach Cities” to the title means the new beauty queen no longer is a true Torrance representative, even though the Torrance pageant has welcomed contestants from other South Bay cities throughout its 24-year history.

Parade organizers agree.

“There haven’t been any plans to include a Miss Torrance because we don’t have a Miss Torrance anymore. It’s some other name,” said Councilman Bill Applegate, who chairs the council committee that oversees the parade.

Leamon, a resident of Lawndale who became Miss Torrance-Beach Cities on Feb. 25, said the controversy around her title is “completely unfair.”

A 1988 graduate of West High School in Torrance, Leamon said much of her daily life revolves around the city of Torrance.

“I went to junior high school and high school in Torrance, and I go to school in Torrance now” at El Camino College, she said. “My family couldn’t afford to live in Torrance anymore and we moved out of Torrance to Lawndale, but Torrance is still a big part of me.”

The sudden Torrance cold shoulder came without warning, just one week after Leamon had attended a Torrance chamber gathering.

“Everybody seemed pretty happy to meet me and see the new queen. I didn’t feel any negativity,” Leamon said. “And now this. It hurts. Obviously, it hurts.”

Her calendar of appearances now is filling with business gatherings in Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach and Carson, as well as the Palos Verdes Peninsula, the other areas from which contestants are accepted.

“I’m just going to go ahead and represent the other cities as best I can,” she said.

The Torrance pageant is a preliminary for the Miss California Pageant. The winner of that contest then goes on to the Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City.

Under Miss America pageant rules, entrants may either live, work or go to school in the franchise area of the local contests. Using those rules, many women enter several pageants. Leamon entered five others before winning the Miss Torrance-Beach Cities title.

Torrance chamber officials insist their decision is “a simple thing” based on the title change.

“It’s no longer the Miss Torrance Pageant. It no longer is a hometown pageant. It’s taken on a whole new meaning,” chamber General Manager Barbara Glennie said. “When she was partly financed by the city, we would invite her to various things. She no longer is an official representative of the city.”

The chamber has been stung by criticism of their decision by Andrea Reeder, executive director of the Miss Torrance-Beach Cities Pageant, who wrote a five-page letter protesting the decision.

“I don’t want to take a bum rap for something when we’re not trying to hurt anybody. . . . It’s certainly nothing personal to the young woman at all,” Glennie said, noting that Leamon may still come to chamber functions as a guest of Reeder, who belongs to the chamber.

“We’re just saying we’re not backing this in any kind of official capacity at this time.”

Glennie said Reeder “put tremendous pressure” on the chamber to publicize the pageant and invite the beauty queen to every chamber function.

“If Andrea Reeder and her team had not put so much pressure on us that they wanted to literally blitz the business community . . . I don’t think the reaction would have been as immediate or strong, but she was very aggressively demanding and put us in a very uncomfortable position.”

Reeder, who runs her own word-processing business and volunteers her time to the pageant, said she will cancel her chamber membership unless the decision is changed.

“How can I possibly ethically attend a Torrance chamber function when it slaps in the face the community activity in which I’m involved?” she said.

Although Reeder says she called the chamber’s offices occasionally to get a list of upcoming chamber functions and submitted material for the chamber newsletter, she says she never was demanding.

“I don’t pressure anybody. And anybody who knows me well knows that I do not do that,” she said.

The ongoing furor, Leamon said, has taken some of the shine out of her crown.

“If it is a personality conflict, I think it’s really bad that it’s getting taken out on me,” she said. “It’s not hurting anybody but me. I’m the one that’s being affected by it.”

Although the situation is emotionally painful, she said it does not affect her receipt of a $1,000 scholarship and actually has strengthened her resolve to do well at the June state pageant in San Diego.

“If I was to go to Miss California and do very well, I’m willing to bet when I came back, they’d really appreciate Miss Torrance-Beach Cities,” she said. “This way, they get their cake and eat it too. If I do well, it’s really positive publicity for them . . . and they’re not giving us a thing in return.”