
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 4, 1995                   TAG: 9510040040
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Short

ORIGINAL MISS AMERICA DIES

Margaret Gorman Cahill, who became the first Miss America in 1921 and later said, ``I really want to forget the whole thing,'' died Sunday at age 90.

Cahill died of cardiac arrest and pneumonia at a nursing home in Bowie, Md.

``Life has been extremely, I say extremely, kind,'' she said in 1980. But of her experience as a beauty queen, she said: ``I never cared to be Miss America. It wasn't my idea. I am so bored by it all. I really want to forget the whole thing.''

Cahill was a Washington teen-ager when she was chosen as winner of the ``Inter-City Beauty Contest'' on the beach in Atlantic City, N.J., Sept. 14, 1921.

She married a Washington real estate developer and became a socialite, commanding newspaper headlines and photographs in the '20s and '30s. She made a few appearances as the first Miss America.

Cahill shunned the pageant in later years, calling it ``cheap'' for not reimbursing her $1,500 in expenses for a 1960 reunion in Atlantic City.

- Associated Press

by CNB