ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, September 1, 1996 TAG: 9609030065
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: ATLANTIC CITY, N.J.
SOURCE: JOHN CURRAN ASSOCIATED PRESS
THEY GET DROPPED, they get lost, they may even get stolen. Crowns are hard
to attain, but they may be even harder to keep.
Phyllis George dropped hers. Susan Perkins used a purloined hotel towel to wrap hers and was found out in front of ``Tonight Show'' cameras.
Marian Bergeron's was stolen. And poor Lee Meriwether - her crown just disappeared.
The Miss America crown, a rhinestone-studded headpiece given to the winner of the world's most famous beauty pageant, endures as its most recognizable symbol.
``It's part of the magic,'' said the reigning Miss America, Shawntel Smith.
Contestants vying to take over her title arrive in Atlantic City on Monday for this year's Miss America Pageant.
The crown, plated with rhodium and decorated with 650 round and emerald-shaped rhinestones, weighs 6.7 ounces and is valued at about $1,000.
While the one given to Miss America during her coronation is hers to keep, a backup is kept at pageant offices here, just in case.
Bergeron, Miss America 1933, says her crown was stolen from her hotel room the very night she won. She never recovered it.
Crowns are more often damaged, mainly because Miss America typically travels about 20,000 miles a month, and that usually means four or five repairs during the year.
``They get into a car and forget they're wearing it and it gets knocked off. That or they just drop it,'' said Barbara Schoppy-Talarico, owner of William Schoppy Trophy Co., a small engraver in suburban Linwood that supplies the crowns for free.
Another problem is keeping the crown in place.
George's crown tumbled off her head as she walked down the runway following her 1971 coronation. She bent over, picked it up and carried it.
``I thought, `Oh, great, now what do I do? I can't just leave this on the runway.' It was so embarrassing,'' George remembers.
George, 47, says the problem was the hairpiece she used in an effort to combat the humid salt air. That meant outgoing Miss America Pamela Eldred, who crowned her, could not get bobby pins to hold.
Though the accident horrified George, some saw it as endearing.
``The fact that a Miss America could drop a crown and have it roll down the runway like that, dropping stones along the way, is part of the magic,'' said Ann-Marie Bivans, a former pageant judge and author.
Another embarrassing moment was the ``Tonight Show'' appearance by Susan Perkins, Miss America 1978. When Johnny Carson asked to see her crown, she produced it wrapped in a towel from the Barclay Hotel, and Carson was more interested in how she got the towel.
Meriwether, Miss America 1955, was somehow left in the lurch.
The crown was redesigned during her reign, so when it was time for the coronation of her successor in 1955, the crown she had been wearing was replaced with the new model.
While she was on stage putting the new crown on the head of Sharon Ritchie, her old crown disappeared. She mentioned to pageant officials several years later that she never got one to keep.
``Whenever the first reunion [of former winners] was, I got a new one,'' said Meriwether, 61, an actress now being seen in the soap opera ``All My Children.''
Now, she said, it means more to her daughters than it does to her.
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Miss America Phyllis George carries her crown downby CNBthe runway after it fell off her head during the 1971 pageant.