Mobile paid for all of us to fly down, and it was quite an experience.' 'I remember being treated to scrumptious lunches and being taken to Bellingrath Gardens and Point Clear. 'There were no complicated routines, no multiple practice sessions and rehearsals,' she said. And the audiences for the performances at the Saenger Theatre were relatively small, Whitenack said. All the girls traveled with their parents. The contestants only stayed a week, compared to the two weeks they now spend in Mobile. Only 18 contestants were involved, not the 50 that currently compete. The first Junior Miss event was small by later standards. But a majority of the members went along with the proposal. Reggie Copeland, who was the Jaycees' president at the time, said several members voted against creating the new event because they had just started the Greater Gulf State Fair the year before, and they didn't want to put too much on their plate.

But they didn't come to the decision easily. Junior Chamber members, known as Jaycees, decided to restrict the Azalea Trail Maid competition to Mobile residents and create a new competition for women across the country. In the 1940s, after World War II ended, the Mobile Junior Chamber of Commerce began a program to let high school seniors compete to become Azalea Trail Maids.īy the 1950s, the competition was drawing girls from throughout the state, as well as from Florida and Mississippi. The seeds for the first Junior Miss competition were sowed more than a decade before Whitenack received her crown and sash. 'We'll get another 15 minutes of fame,' she joked. She'll be honored at a banquet at the Battle House Hotel tonight after the competition ends. Whitenack is one of dozens of past Junior Miss contestants and winners in town for the golden anniversary. She arrived Friday and will be in attendance tonight when one of this year's 50 contestants is named the 50th America's Junior Miss. Now, 50 years after the program was founded and 49 years after the first pageant, Whitenack again boarded a plane for Mobile. Whitenack won the competition, earning a $5,000 scholarship and becoming the first-ever America's Junior Miss. It's a risky venture for 17-year-olds to get on an airplane and fly to Mobile having no idea what they're getting themselves into.'

'I was wondering what I was getting myself into,' Whitenack recalled last week from her home in Scottsdale, Ariz. The 17-year-old was on her way with her parents to a town she had barely heard of to compete in a scholarship competition she knew little about. In the spring of 1958, Phyllis Whitenack climbed aboard an airplane in her hometown of Bluefield, W.Va.

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