Austin, Texas

1967

"10 minutes ladies, please make sure you're ready" came the voice of Mrs Sommers, the head chaperone at the Miss Austin pageant and a former Miss America herself. The nervous chatter in the room and the quick pace of dozens of pageant queen hopefuls became almost overwhelming as the looming start time dawned. Sue Ellen Shepard was amongst the young women, although she was less enthusiastic about the whole competition than her peers seemed to be. "Sue Ellen, what have I told you about frowning? You'll get wrinkles and ruin any chance at finding a worthy husband" Patricia Shepard scolded her young daughter, "sorry mama, I will do better," replied Sue Ellen with her best smile, "that's better".

The curtain opened and the contestants walked onstage for the introductory parade, Sue Ellen was on the arm of her boyfriend Clint Ogden, an unwilling participant at first much like herself, but with a lot of begging from Sue Ellen Clint had finally agreed to escort her, much to Patricia's aversion and disapproval. Sue Ellen forced herself to keep smiling and at least appear to be enjoying the pageant; she could not disappoint her mother and really had no other skills to fall back on, so pageantry was important, no matter her own personal feelings. The swimwear and eveningwear segments went well and all that was left were the talent and question segments, Sue Ellen was confident in her abilities to not only look pretty, but also appear ladylike in all aspects of her performance.

"Many women in our society marry men that they do not love out of a sense of obligation. This can lead to the breakdown in traditional family values and many societal problems. Do you believe that women should marry only for love, only for social standing or for other reasons?" Sue Ellen could feel Patricia's eyes on her as the question was posed; the question was perfect for her well trained daughter, but Sue Ellen despite years of training was still unsure of her mother's worldview and methods. With a deep breath and confident smile, Sue Ellen began to answer the question, "I believe that the number one reason for marriage should always be love, not money nor social status, but love. Because without a loving bond, a relationship is just a business transaction and cannot possibly spread the genuine values that are so important to our society. A woman should look for a man she is compatible with not only in a social and financial sense, but in an emotional sense because where there is love, there is understanding and respect and most, if not all issues can be resolved with good communication and respect". The audience applauded and the judges marked their scores, but there was one member of the audience who was not pleased with the 'love conquers all' spiel that the young woman had been preaching.

Sue Ellen moved backstage confident that she would be making the final cut as long she performed well in the talent portion. Changing into her long, black dress, she thought about the question and the way she had answered it, truthfully she had had Clint in the back of her mind from the moment the question was asked. Clint was not marriage material by the standards her mother set, a lady always marries a gentleman and Clint was just a poor boy, but Sue Ellen had other ideas of what a good husband was. Clint was innovative and hardworking, he may not be a rich man, but he was a good man and she loved him. Her mother was always setting her up on dates with rich men, most of them were conceited, boring or nice but lacked the chemistry and spark she had with Clint. Most recently, she had been set up with Billy Frampton, the son of a billionaire whose wealth was made in the oil, uranium, diamonds and coal industries. Billy, or Mr. Frampton as she had called him their entire first meeting, was a very nice and rather attractive man, but she had stronger feelings for Clint despite his shortcomings in the financial column. Clint was a computing student who worked part-time at a physics lab. Sue Ellen had met him in one of her general education classes at The University of Texas at Austin. They had spent a great deal of time together despite her full social schedule of sorority functions, cheerleading practices and modelling shoots. Clint had asked Sue Ellen to be his girlfriend after half a semester of 'hanging' with each other and they had been together for over a year now. Throughout their year together, Sue Ellen had been on many 'dates' with other men to appease her mother. "Sue Ellen, Sue Ellen, Sue Ellen!" she snapped out of her thoughts as she heard her name being called by one of the backstage workers, she was up next to perform.

Sue Ellen's cover performance of 'My Love' by Petula Clark was met with a standing ovation and it was soon time for the finalists and the eventual winner to be announced. Standing in a row with 5 other beautiful girls, Sue Ellen started to get very nervous, she didn't necessarily want to win the pageant for herself, but more so that her mother would be proud of her. "The fourth runner up to Miss Austin is…" Sue Ellen was not really listening even though she should have had her full attention on the host. "Ladies and gentlemen, your new Miss Austin is Sue Ellen Shepard", as she heard her name she snapped out of the daydream she was in, they really called her name? The hosts were presenting her with flowers and crowning her. She put her best pageant smile on her face and started waving to the audience. It was all a blur, the photographers, the other contestants congratulating her and her mother proudly smiling.

After the initial chaos cleared, she really just wanted to go home and cuddle up with Clint, her mother had promised that she could stay out a little later with Clint if she won the crown, and she did. They spent a few relaxing hours together, celebrating her new title, but really just enjoying each other's company.

Her picture greeted her the next morning on the front page of The Daily Texan, her college newspaper, as well as the front page of the Statesman newspaper, an Austin-wide publication. She was a big deal today, but all her mother could do was remind her that, "you may have won this battle, you're Miss Austin now, but Miss Texas will be an even bigger challenge, and if you work hard enough you could go all the way to being Miss America". Sue Ellen knew that her mother was over the win and onto the next challenge.

To be continued...