Patriotism Amid Pageantry

Miss California woke her father with a phone call on the morning of Sept. 11.

When Glenn Baldwin looked at his TV, back in Orange County, his reaction was, “OK, send my baby home.” Never mind that his daughter Stephanie had been working toward this weekend for the last six of her 23 years. “Just send her home.”

Atlantic City is 2 1/2 hours south of Manhattan and the site of the World Trade Center attack, but the danger was clear to Baldwin and everyone else whose lives had pointed toward this weekend, from the gown-makers to the baton-twirling experts.

“The terrorists are taking out things American,” was how Bob Arnhum saw it. “And, love it or hate it, what’s more American than the Miss America Pageant?”

Yet after the initial fear, another thought came to Arnhum, the 61-year-old San Diegan who heads the volunteer organization that selects Miss California: “Nobody will hate us this year.”

Two days after the terrorist attacks, the 51 contestants in competition for Miss America 2002 voted 2 to 1 to go ahead with the pageant that culminated Saturday night in the televised extravaganza that always ends with one of them being crowned as the host croons, “There she is . . .” The winner Saturday was Katie Harman of Oregon.

The finale may be all that was traditional for this year’s event, where a bomb-sniffing dog walked the runway as the audience filed into the cavernous Boardwalk convention hall.

Tony Danza hosted the show, which a new team of producers had long hoped would reverse declining ratings and put an end to jokes at the pageant’s expense. Some new effects were in place: The old swimsuit competition became “Lifestyle and Fitness,” the evening-wear contest “Presence and Poise,” and Saturday night’s finale was reinvented to borrow unashamedly from hit quiz shows and “Survivor”-style reality television. Contestants who did not make the final cut got to vote on those who bested them to help pick Miss America. All this was designed to give new life to a competition that originated in 1921, a time when men wore top hats along the boardwalk here, women carried parasols and Margaret Gorman of Washington, D.C., won a “Golden Mermaid” trophy and the title “America’s Most Beautiful Bathing Girl.”

Then came Sept. 11. The first talk was of security and how the usual boardwalk parade would have to be scrapped. Parts of Saturday’s show would be dropped, too, such as the glitz of the limousine arrivals. It would have to become more “like a huge USO show,” said Robert M. Renneisen, who heads the Miss America Organization.

Perhaps more significantly, the new “Survivor”-like touches suddenly seemed less significant. All involved sensed that the apple-pie qualities of the pageant would be enough to connect with audiences.

At a breakfast, contestants heard about WWII-era Miss Americas, like Jean Bartel, who is credited with selling $2.5 million in war bonds. “We saw that something good might come out of Tuesday,” said California’s Stephanie Baldwin. “We realized that Miss America will have a role to play.”

In recent years, it took courage to enter contests like this, Baldwin said, for even if you win, “you have to fight the stereotype. You have your own [charity] platform, and you have to take on another, of defending the pageant. This year, you may be looked upon to be a symbol again.”

Friday night, the parade moved inside, to the ballroom of historic Boardwalk Hall, where Art Deco chandeliers hang from a ceiling painted like a cloudy sky, a golden sun at the center. Bands and floats were out, and each state got just 10 tickets and a table.

Few seemed to mind that the festivities were curtailed--getting here, after all, took years of work for most of the women, who generally hail from middle class families. Though several are daughters of doctors, one father repairs RVs for a living and another is a janitor.

California’s Baldwin and her delegation were realistic enough to accept she would not become Miss America. “I got what I wanted--Miss California,” she said.

She does not quite have the flawless porcelain features of, say, Miss Tennessee--Stephanie Culberson, a minister’s daughter who won preliminaries in what used to be the swimsuit and evening gown categories.

Miss Oregon had the wholesome blond look and a powerful platform, “Supporting Terminal Breast Cancer Patients.” And Miss District of Columbia, Marshawn Evans, 22, won two preliminary contests, for her interview and for her talent. She is actually from Texas, but qualified for the D.C. contest by serving an internship in the Justice Department, to which she was appointed by then-Gov. George W. Bush; she worked under Janet Reno. Though she lists her biggest accomplishment as “overcoming low expectations,” she is hardly lacking in aspirations: One of her goals is to become U.S. attorney general.

She also danced and twirled to “I Will Survive” and Friday wore a red, white and blue velvet cape picturing both the U.S. Capitol and an American flag, bringing patriotic cheers from the crowd.

On Saturday, Danza began his first stint filling Bert Parks’ shoes by telling the audience that the pageant was going forward as “a tribute to the qualities that we cherish in America . . . and to add our voice to the nation’s resolve.”

The biggest cheers greeted the glamorous Miss Tennessee. Although Miss California made the cut to the final 20, she did not make the last 10. She was led to a backstage room where eliminated candidates would vote on the rest. But producers’ hopes for some reality-TV tension were dashed by the traditional beauty pageant spirit--one contestant remarked, “Any one of them will make a great Miss America.”

As they continued to pare down the finalists, the transplanted Texan still seemed hard to beat, but so did Miss Tennessee, and Miss Massachusetts reminded the audience that she has a brother in the Marines.

But Harman won, after performing a haunting Puccini aria and nearly acing a current events and social studies quiz, one of the new events. At 11 p.m. the 21-year-old was adorned with the crown.

“I now have a double platform,” she announced minutes later, backstage. The second part? To “raise the spirits of the American people.”

She will be traveling to New York and Washington, she said, “within the week.”