THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, July 1, 1994 TAG: 9406300187
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 16 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY JANIE BRYANT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 185 lines
ENGA DAVIS VISITED Atlantic City the weekend of the last Miss America Pageant. She wanted to mingle, meet the contestants and get a feel for what it was like to be there.
She left with one single thought: ``I can do this.''
She gets no argument from Kay Sykes, who has served as director of the Miss Portsmouth Seawall Festival pageant for 14 years.
Davis of Hampton easily won the Miss Portsmouth Seawall competition, a preliminary to the Miss Virginia and Miss America pageants.
``She's probably one of the most talented we've ever had,'' Sykes said.
And that's no small accomplishment, according to the pageant director, who says Portsmouth has ``the best record in the state'' for picking contenders.
In the 14 years that Sykes has been pageant director, two Miss Portsmouth Seawall Festivals have won the state pageant. All but one has made the Top 10, including two first runners-up and three in the top five.
Sykes thinks Davis has a good chance of being the city's third winner and believes she has an especially good shot winning the talent award.
Hugh Copeland, who, as director of the Hurrah Players, has worked with Davis, doesn't dispute that.
``She has a Broadway belt voice,'' Copeland said. ``She has a lot of power, a lot of range and she has a lot of personality to go with it.''
It's the kind of stage presence that helped Davis laugh with the audience the night she was supposed to sing ``Wind Beneath My Wings'' and found out the hard way she had brought the wrong music tape.
``I asked her several times before we left home `Do you have your music?' '' her mother, Ezzie Davis said from her home in Goldsboro, where Enga was raised.
``The guy put her music in and ``Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer'' started playing.''
``It was nowhere near Christmas,'' her 16-year-old sister Ahkiyak Davis laughed.
But Enga Davis didn't miss a beat and ended up getting a standing ovation.
``She really worked the audience,'' her sister recalled. ``She's a trooper. She just stood up there and performed a cappella and it was beautiful.''
The gift for winning an audience is one that Davis has been nurturing since she started singing in her church as a small child.
``She was about 3- or 4-years-old,'' her mother recalled. ``She would stand in the middle of the church with her hymn book upside down. But she knew the song and she would just sing, sing, sing.
``She really didn't get any lessons until she got to college,'' Ezzie Davis said.
But Enga Davis continued singing in choirs and glee clubs and by the time she was in junior high school she was the featured soloist.
That's when she spotted an ad that said a prize would go to the talent winner of the Miss North Carolina Charm pageant.
``I just wanted to enter the talent competition,'' Enga Davis remembers. ``My mother said if I was going to be in it, I might as well compete in all phases.''
``That's the first time I was scared,'' she said. ``All I wanted to do was sing.''
She remembers feeling out of place.
``I didn't feel I had a pretty gown,'' she said. ``It wasn't as extravagant as the other contestants. I didn't know anything about sequins and feathers and beads. It was just a regular lace and satin gown. I felt uncomfortable about that.''
The judges apparently didn't notice. She was selected second runner-up and Miss Photogenic.
``That's how everything got started,'' Davis said.
After that, Davis entered a talent search and won a trip to Hollywood to perform on the TV show, ``Puttin' on the Hits.'' She was selected Miss North Carolina Teen Charm model in 1986 and Hal Jackson's Miss North Carolina Talented Teen in 1987.
When Enga Davis entered the Miss North Carolina preliminary, people warned her that she would not win because she is African American.
``Enga is a person that never placed a limitation on herself,'' her mother said. ``She never saw a pageant as being a white pageant or a black pageant.
``This is what I instilled in my kids from day one,'' Ezzie Davis explained. ``You don't see color - you see people.''
Enga Davis won that preliminary and was crowned Miss Goldsboro 1992. She went onto the state pageant where she won the talent award.
But family members knew she wouldn't stop there.
``It's always been Enga's dream to be Miss America,'' Ahkiyak Davis, her sister, said. ``Enga looks at Miss America as being a really positive role model. She loves working with children.''
As Miss Goldsboro, she won the city's Community Service Award for a youth motivation program she took to every school in the county.
After graduating from Hampton University two years ago with a degree in communications and music, she spent almost a year as an entertainer on cruise ships in the Caribbean.
These days she's working with young people again.
She has returned to Hampton University to work full time and to pursue a graduate degree in youth counseling.
She is serving as an admissions counselor and public-relations representative there, traveling the East Coast, recruiting students for the university.
But Davis won't mind putting her studies and career on hold for a year if things go the way she hopes Saturday.
Davis has been preparing for Saturday night since February.
If she's not singing her song, she's humming it. She's pored over newspapers and news magazines and put herself to the test with mock interviews.
But she's not worried about the interview portion of competition. She likes that almost as much as performing.
``It's the only chance where you have the opportunity to meet the judges and speak with them one on one so they get to know you and your platform.''
Davis' platform is the prevention of youth violence. The contestant was deeply touched at a university conference by a woman who heads a program aimed at curbing youth violence.
The woman, who had lost a son to gun violence, now heads a Detroit-based organization call SOSAD (Save Our Sons and Daughters). If Davis wins the state or national title, she plans to help by taking the same message to as many young people as possible.
Regardless, she plans to start a SOSAD chapter in Hampton Roads.
That kind of commitment is something judges are looking for, Davis said.
``They want them to be young ladies of the '90s that care about things,'' said Sykes. ``It's very different than what it was. It isn't a beauty pageant. It's the largest scholarship program for women in the world.''
Pageant officials are serious about changing that beauty contest image, Sykes said.
That's why the interview phase of the competition is longer. Contestants wear business suits and participate at a podium rather than seated in the old interview style.
The reason for that, Sykes said, is the pageant ``is much more geared to the press.''
``The first thing Miss America does is have a press conference,'' she said.
To focus more on the scholarship end of the pageant, Sykes added, the pageant has lowered the age requirement to 17 to encourage the younger participants who are just entering or still in college.
The money is no longer a cash prize but paid directly to a school or toward school loans. In cases, where the winner has finished her education and has no outstanding educational debts, the money goes into savings bonds, Sykes said.
Even the evening gown competition has toned down.
``It's very anti-beads, sequins and glitz,'' said Sykes. ``They want the girls to wear contemporary dresses that reflect women of the '90s.''
Sykes found out they were serious about a different look last year when she showed up with Portsmouth's contender and a glitzy evening gown.
``This year we have switched,'' she said. ``The girl who won didn't have a bead on her dress.''
But there is still one portion of the event that typifies the old ideas of a beauty contest - the swim suit competition.
Davis admits that's the part of the pageant she likes least.
``It (bothered me) at first because I felt `Oh no, you have to walk across the stage in a swimsuit and everyone sees your body,'' she said. ``But if you're physically fit and confident it shouldn't matter.''
Besides, she added, ``It's so quick. That's the fastest phase of the competition.''
``But I would say that for me personally, out of the four phases (of competition) that's the one that I really just look at and say `You really have to work hard in this area.' ''
It's the only category of the Portsmouth pageant she didn't win. And even though it counts only 15 percent of the overall score, it was the area that pageant officials told her to work on.
She's since lost about five pounds and toned up by walking, running and working out. There's nothing she can do, however, that will stretch her 5-foot-4 petite frame into that of a tall long-legged contestant that might have a bit of an edge in swim wear.
But Sykes isn't worried. There have been many winners who were petite rather than model-tall, she points out.
Davis is also content with her petite frame:
``With four-inch heels, I feel 6 feet tall.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Cover]
A MISS WITH A VISION
[Color] Photo by PETER A. SUNDBERG
Egna Davis of Hampton has a ``Broadway belt voice,'' according to
Hugh Copeland, director of the Hurrah Players.
Photo by PETER A. SUNDBERG
Kay Sykes, who hosted the going away party for Enga Davis, zips up
the gown of Davis before a fashion show at her home.
Photo by PETER A. SUNDBERG
Laura Quinn, third runner-up in the Miss Portsmouth Seawall pageant,
hugs Enga Davis during a going away party.
by CNB