Miss America Spreads the Word
She is even named after beautiful things.
Tara Dawn Holland, Miss America 1997, was in Glendale recently, stumping for her favorite cause--literacy.
The TV cameramen, including one from Korea, probably wouldn’t have cared if she had been stumping for better psychiatric care for household pets. Or if she had chosen to state her position in Inuit or some other obscure tongue.
After all, causes, however worthy, are not what Miss America is all about. Being beautiful is what Miss America is all about. People don’t rush to be photographed with her because of her insights on Bosnia. That’s a rhinestone tiara she carries around with her, not Scientific American.
But who cares? She is lovely, as well as polished and gracious. Gathered in the penthouse of the Red Lion hotel, several of the cameramen wear the fixed smiles of the happily mesmerized as the tall (5-foot-10), slim, 24-year-old brunet explains why she is an impassioned supporter of literacy programs.
“I was 17 when I realized someone very close to me couldn’t read,” Holland said. She declines to name the person who piqued her interest in the cause.
“That person still doesn’t know that anybody knows her secret,” she explained. But the result, Holland said, was that “many people have learned to read in her honor.”
There was a time when all Miss America had to do was justice to a swimsuit. That has slowly changed over the years as the pageant has tried to shift its image from beauty pageant to some less easily described event in which a really, really gorgeous woman is crowned after making a very serious speech on a completely noncontroversial subject.
The “platform,” as each competitor’s position is called, was added to the pageant in 1989 and is part of a gradual process that has eliminated many of the most blatantly offensive aspects of the event. Stiletto heels are no longer a requirement of the swimsuit competition, for instance--the women can go barefoot.
As to the competitors’ causes, winners’ platforms in recent years have included AIDS awareness, homelessness and easing the transition from school to work. (But anybody who thinks Miss America is chosen on the strength of her platform should not be operating heavy machinery.)
Holland was appearing at the 31st annual conference of California Literacy Inc., a nonprofit organization that describes itself as “the nation’s oldest and largest statewide adult volunteer literacy organization.”
Holland became a literacy tutor soon after she realized how awful it must be to be an adult who can’t decipher a recipe, read a street sign or peruse a newspaper. She was president of the Campus Alliance for Literacy at Florida State University, where she trained more than 150 literacy volunteers. President Bush chose her as one of his volunteer “Points of Light.”
Unlike some Miss Americas, Holland said she didn’t have professional counseling before the pageant--either for the beauty part or the position paper.
“Nobody sat down and coached me on anything,” said Holland, who was Miss Kansas and sang at the Kansas rally at which Bob Dole announced Jack Kemp as his running mate.
Holland has the facts and figures about literacy at her fingertips. One in five American adults can’t read or write adequately. And she is happy to use her crown to garner media coverage for a cause she clearly believes in.
“If I weren’t Miss America,” she said, as the cameras rolled, “I wouldn’t have all of you here.”
As to Holland’s own initiation into literacy, she says she learned to read when she was 4 or 5. She doesn’t recall the first book she mastered, but she remembers her favorite: “The Little Engine That Could.”
As to the kind of reading she enjoys most--mysteries, romance novels, nonfiction?--she likes autobiographies, she said, “but I don’t have a lot of time to just sit down and read.” She has been traveling 20,000 miles a month since she was crowned in September, with only one day a month off.
While the media event had all the spontaneity of a coronation, it had one genuinely moving moment.
One of the purposes of the photo shoot was to get pictures of Miss America with successful graduates of the California Literacy program that the organization can use in its literature. As the news conference was breaking up, John Zickefoos of Corona leaned close to Holland and said quietly, “I just wanted to tell you how much your being here means to us.”
Three years ago, Zickefoos, now 37, decided he had to overcome his shame at not being able to read and seek help. The reason, he explained: “My son was a second-grader, and I couldn’t help him with his homework.” Today Zickefoos is one of the organization’s paid staffers.
The smile that appeared on Holland’s face was genuinely radiant.
