ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, June 27, 1996 TAG: 9606270013
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE STAFF WRITER
Andrea Ballengee, the first Miss Virginia ever to lose her crown, kept busy last year by dancing on a cruise ship and visiting foreign countries. But she never forgot.
Ballengee was stripped of her title after only three weeks, for embellishing her resume. In losing her title, she lost a courtesy apartment, a 1995 Camaro and the crown - which a member of the Miss Virginia Board repossessed in person and carried away in a shopping bag.
The title devolved to first runner-up Amber Medlin - Miss Virginia Beach.
Contacted last week at her parents' home in Jupiter, Fla., Ballengee said her year had been "touched with sadness."
"I'll never say it was fair, what happened," said the former Miss Hampton-Newport News. "The Miss Virginia Board said they had done an investigation ... and they said, `We found what Andrea said [on her pageant fact sheet] to be justified, and we're going to stand behind her.' It was right there in the newspaper and on TV. I think they caved in to pressure from public opinion."
Responded Margaret Baker, the pageant's executive director:
"I think everybody in Roanoke knows that we did what we had to do."
To those who don't understand the allure of the beauty pageant, or the thrill of victory, it may seem Andrea Ballengee came out ahead.
After all, she was allowed to keep the $7,000 scholarship she won when she was crowned Miss Virginia on July1.
At the same time, she was freed from a year's worth of public appearances that must now and then strike even the most enthusiastic winner as bordering on drudgery.
Instead, Ballengee said she spent six months as a dance captain aboard the Queen Elizabeth 2. The Cunard Line's luxury ocean liner is three football fields long and contains four restaurants, eight bars, a spa and fitness center, four swimming pools and a casino.
Ballengee, who said she was a cheerleader and danced in a contemporary dance ensemble at Virginia Tech, was permitted to roam each time the ship docked.
Thus, while Miss Virginia visited such exotic locales as Flint Hill and Chilhowie, Ballengee marveled at Holland, Belgium, Japan, Italy and Venezuela.
Ballengee, who had never been out of America before, said she used to think Williamsburg was old - until she went to Genoa, Italy, and saw the home of Christopher Columbus.
"All these things are so eye-opening," Ballengee said. "I loved Europe."
But Ballengee also said losing her crown was "a sad point in my life.
"It felt like the whole world was crashing down on me. It's so easy to feel like you're beaten when something like that happens."
Ballengee, 22, was twice a runner-up before winning the Miss Virginia title a year ago. The night she won she told a reporter, "You can go over it and over it in your mind, but when it happens, it's so overwhelming."
But success was barely hers before it started to disintegrate.
Ballengee, a graduate of Virginia Tech, had claimed on a pageant fact sheet she was a member of the national honor society Phi Beta Kappa. When this was mentioned in a story about her, an official on the society's membership board at Tech disputed it.
Ballengee also claimed she had graduated from Tech magna cum laude. In fact, she graduated cum laude, a slightly less distinguished academic honor, Tech officials said.
Other factual errors emerged - some perhaps minor, though to pageant officials they began to show a trend. The last straw came when they discovered Ballengee had incorrectly claimed she was a first year law student at the University of Miami Law School.
In fact, Ballengee had not been accepted but placed on a waiting list.
When her crown was yanked, it made state and national headlines. USA Today even gave her a mention in its "Briefly" column, in between Paul McCartney and Barbra Streisand.
"People were comparing me to Vanessa Williams" - the Miss America who, it was discovered later, had posed nude for a men's magazine. "I was never in Penthouse."
As for her misstatements, Ballengee insisted the things she wrote were "projections," submitted to pageant officials in advance of the contest, when much of it still was up in the air.
"Everything I wrote on there ... I had a reason for writing it. It's not like I pulled something out of the sky. I'd do it again."
Ballengee said she has worked for a Florida hospice since leaving the QE 2 in February.
She also said she plans to attend St. Thomas University Law School in the fall. Law school admissions officials there said they could not discuss whether Ballengee had been admitted.
The ex-beauty queen said she still attends pageants frequently with her mother - "We live and breathe for pageants" - but has entered none herself since Miss Virginia.
She said losing her crown had made her sad, but not bitter.
"I had a bad experience, but I'm a real positive person," Ballengee said. "I learned real life experiences that are going to help me the rest of my life."
Not that she's quite over it yet.
Ballengee, who described herself as "a daddy's girl," said a few weeks ago she was feeling blue, and her father gave her some encouragement.
More or less.
"He just hugged me and said, `One thing I can say, Andrea, is life with you has never been boring.'''
LENGTH: Long : 107 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: FILE/1995 Andrea Ballengee was crowned Miss Virginiaby CNBlast year, only to have her crown and title removed after three
weeks. color.