WARREN EGEBO
PAGEANT ENTHUSIAST EXTRAORDINAIRE
by Rafael Robert Delfin
WARREN EGEBO e-mailed me a few days before
the Miss USA 2005 pageant in Baltimore requesting that we meet. I responded and I
said that I would be glad to meet with him. On our first meeting in the lobby of my hotel,
Warren had brought with him two boxes filled with pageant memorabilia - any thing you
could possibly imagine - from video tapes to vintage pageant program books. I have never
met anyone who was so knowledgeable about pageants besides William Prendiz de Jurado!
I interviewed Warren in the dining area of the Sheraton-Columbia Hotel minutes after
the round-robin interviews with some of the contestants.
RRD: Warren, tell me, how did your interest in beauty pageants start?
First of all, having four beautiful sisters!
I'm the only boy, the youngest in the family. My four sisters were homecoming queens,
college queens, snow queens, 4-H queens, so I followed them on a lot of contests.
My first contact with Miss Universe was in 1961. It was a Saturday evening in Canton,
South Dakota and I'm at a men's clothing store with my father and Miss Universe pageant
is on TV at the clothing store - it was called Wagner's - and Marlene Schmidt from
Germany is the winner that year and I am mesmerized! That was the first pageant
that I remember and I was eleven years old.
RRD: You mentioned that you're involved with the Miss Philadelphia Scholarship Program.
How did that come about?
I have about a 30-year history with the Miss America
program. I was the program book chairperson for the Miss Minnesota pageant for a couple
of years. I was the executive director of the Miss Green Bay Scholarship Pageant.
I revived that pageant that had been going for a great number of years in Green Bay;
there was a seventeen-year hiatus and then I brought it back to Green Bay. Four years
after we revived the pageant, we got Miss Wisconsin. I started going to Miss America
and have been there every year during pageant week, then when I moved to the Philadelphia
area from Wisconsin I volunteered my services to the Miss Philadelphia Scholarship
organization and now I do the program book every year and I'm on the Board of
Directors of the Miss Philadelphia Scholarship program.
RRD: You love beauty. You're a lover of beauty, a lover of beautiful women. What is
your definition of beauty? What do you consider a beautiful woman?
Like the old proverb says, "A thing of beauty is
a joy forever." Beauty is inner beauty but it exudes in outer beauty. Beauty is a virtue,
when it's done right. Somebody can be beautiful at age 93, and somebody can be a beautiful
as a baby. Beauty is something that you aspire to; it is innate. Beauty is found in all
cultures. But really beautiful people give service to others. There are a lot of people that have great facial
features but who aren't really beautiful people. Then there are plain-looking people
that have vivaciousness about them that is magnetic. Mother Teresa was beautiful
in my estimation.
RRD: So basically beauty comes from within. A plan-looking person came become extraordinary depending
on how he or she emits their inner beauty.
Right.
RRD: Marlene Schmidt is one of your favorite beauty queens?
Warren: I think you always go back to the first
one that you saw, though I have other favorites. One of them is Debbie Shelton,
the most beautiful Miss USA perhaps facially, but she has also a remarkable personality.
Debbie was first runner-up to Marisol Malaret of Puerto Rico in Miss Universe 1970,
and in any given year she probably would have won. I also like Apasra Hongsakula,
Miss Universe 1965 from Thailand. Among Miss Americas, I love Yolande Betbeze!
Miss Universe and Miss USA wouldn't have been created had she not refused to wear
her Catalina swimsuit. And her first runner - up was Miss South Dakota, Irene O"Connor,
who graduated from my alma mater - the University of South Dakota."
RRD: About Miss America, Donald Trump is considering buying the pageant. What are your thoughts on this? Do you think the move is a good idea?
Oh, I have mixed feelings because. I've been to
Atlantic City and I've stayed at the Trump Plaza and Trump has a long reach already.
The only thing I hope that he wouldn't do would be to eliminate the talent competition
because this is what makes Miss America unique. It's wonderful to see two or three
minutes of somebody who's an amateur sing her heart out or twirl her baton in front
of twenty thousand people. There's something exciting and electric about that!
"Last year, they only had two contestants that performed their talent live on national
TV and that was a travesty."
RRD: Tell us more about your pageant memorabilia collection.
When I was about 13, I started clipping out stuff
out of papers that had to do with pageants, local stuff - the Snow Queen, the 4-H Queen.
I went to Miss Sioux Falls, South Dakota pageant when Mary Harum won Miss Sioux Falls.
She's now known as Mary Hart in "Entertainment Tonight". She went to Miss America
in 1970 and made the top ten. When I was 17 years old - and I have been doing this
now for 37 years - every week after the pageant I would send away to Miss Universe
and Miss USA for the pageant program book. I ventured out into other pageants getting
their program books, and I bought many of these books from the pageants that I have
attended. I have a copy of Miss Universe 1967 program book that sold for a dollar
that year; Margaretta Arvidsson, the 1966 winner from Sweden, was on the cover.
Now, I have the whole collection.
RRD: Grace Kelly was from Philadelphia!
Yes!
RRD: You know that some feminists would say that pageants demoralize women. Do you
think that pageants still have relevance in today's world?
By all means. I think they're a showcase for
talent like in Miss America, or a showcase for goal settings. Does the swimsuit
segment have any relevance? It's relevant because of fitness today; people work out
religiously and there are thousands of health clubs across the nation. It is relevant
to the goal of being fit. Besides, Miss America started out as a bathing beauty
contest, and parading in swimsuit is a tradition. And certainly viewership would
go down if we didn't have the swimsuit competition. I had to defend the swimsuit segment
many times, and I don't think it exploits women any more than Disneyland exploits
children. It's a part of our culture, a way that you shoot towards a goal depending
on the context.
RRD: Not only that but also today's women are smarter, more educated, more cultured.
Besides, one good thing that the feminist movement has accomplished is that it has
given women a sense of empowerment and control. Women know what is good for them as
individuals and career people. Pageants are merely one avenue to give them an opportunity
to better their lives. I agree with you that pageants in general do not exploit women,
but there are some pageants who do exploit them.
I work with a scholarship pageant, and we use that
terminology ("scholarship") very strongly. We are helping the educational development
of young women. I can share with you one incident in which a 17-year-old won our
local pageant; she applied for a national scholarship to the Miss America program
when she went to med school. She got $3,000 every year for med school because
she was in our local pageant. She's now a doctor of optometry. Her pageant gave
her a doctor's degree in my estimation. Her success story can be told countless
times. Many of our winners have gone on to bigger and better things! And with
the high cost of education these days, every little help that you get is good.
RRD: Well, thanks a lot for giving CB a chance to interview you, Warren. I know that
you provide great service to the pageant world and also to many pageant fans who
might be interested in your pageant memorabilia!
Thank you for the opportunity! It's been a fun
hobby. When fans see my pageant collection, they exclaim, "Where in the world did you
get that?" Someday, I hope to donate it in a museum of pageantry and there's a
possibility of one in Florida.
RRD: What about donating them to a public library? They could have a special
collection department just for pageants.
Yes, I do even have a couple of public libraries
in mind. Pageantry is part of pop culture, and thanks to the Internet and E-bay,
the interest in pageantry has increased. I have corresponded with people from all
over the world with my pageant collection, and I didn't realize that there are people
in Hong Kong, or in Sacramento, California, or in Dallas, Texas that were doing the
same thing as I was. And when we communicate with each other, we realize that some
of us started at different times in doing some of this collection. I've been
collecting for thirty years, and having a vast collection myself, someday people
will have much bigger collection than mine.
OCTOBER 2005
PHOTO CREDIT : Warren Egebo
