CHAPEL HILL —
It was supposed to be a graceful goodbye — a scripted show of gratitude for a fairytale year as the face of the American beauty pageant universe.
But Wendy Dascomb knew that her time in the spotlight was coming to an end — that not long after she delivered her farewell speech in front of the millions watching the 1970 Miss U.S.A. Pageant, a new young woman would assume both her role and the platform that came with it.
So a few seconds into the remarks that had, hours earlier, been scrubbed by corporate brass in an attempt to rein her in, Wendy paused and glanced off stage.
She thought about the disfigured Vietnam veterans she met at a hospital in Colorado and the female journalists who were paid by the hour while their male counterparts enjoyed contractually-guaranteed salaries and benefits packages.
She harnessed her disdain for then-President Richard Nixon and a war she viewed as senseless and unjust.
And then, with a few simple words, she became a pioneer.
“I have a very, very strong hope for the girl who’s the winner this year,” she said. “I hope she can stand on this place at this time (next year) and relate to all the viewing public a year of beautiful and meaningful experiences, rather than my year’s preoccupation with fear — a great deal of fear for our world.”
•
Growing up in the affluent neighborhoods of New Orleans, Wendy never dreamt of a future as a beauty queen.
If anything, her experiences as a teenager stoked a rebellion inside of her — a desire to leave behind a world in which money and status trumped intrinsic value.
So she left home to attend Stratford, a small women’s college in Virginia, to play basketball.
“Let’s just say I was really tired of wearing cocktail dresses, OK?” she said. “That life, it just wasn’t for me.”
She had no idea that shortly after her stint in Virginia began, she would, again, find herself among society’s elite — that a pageant she entered on a whim would leave her forever changed.
She had no way of knowing that a professor’s request would transform her into one of the faces of a nation during some of its darkest hours.
“I was in this speech class and the professor said, ‘I want you to enter the Miss Piedmont Pageant,’” Wendy said. “I found it a bit strange because I was like a hippie type. It was my rebellion against the social scene in New Orleans. I didn’t even have a one-piece swimsuit or an evening gown.”
So she borrowed the clothing she would need to compete.
And after a surprising victory, she went on to vie for the title of Miss Virginia — a process far more grueling than she had expected.
“Pageants last two weeks. It’s really weird,” Wendy said. “You are really scrutinized.”
But she stayed true to the woman she had grown into at Stratford — honest, inquisitive, unapologetic.
And the judges loved her for it.
•
A college freshman picked up the phone and made a collect call.
“I didn’t tell my parents I was in these pageants,” Wendy said. “So after I won the second one, I picked up the phone and said, ‘I would like to make a collect call.’ The woman said, ‘Well who should we tell them is calling?’ I said, ‘Just say Miss Virginia.’”
Her parents were shocked as their little girl downplayed the experience.
It still had not occurred to Wendy that she could potentially take home the crown.
“The other girls, they were all very professional pageant people — very polished,” she said.
And the interviews — each with a different celebrity judge — lasted hours at a time.
But when, several days before the main event, she was informed that she had placed in the Top 10 of the swimsuit competition, it finally hit her.
“I was like, ‘Whoa,’” Wendy said. “That is the first time it occurred to me that I was even in the running.”
•
Wendy looked the part, but it was clear she was not the typical Miss U.S.A. contestant.
While the other girls waited in line to sit on Joe Namath’s lap for a picture, she just wanted to talk football.
“It was funny because at one point, he was like, ‘Would you like to have a picture taken sitting on my lap?’ I said, ‘No. I don’t think I need that, Joe. I just want to talk football,’” Wendy said. “He was dumbfounded.”
And when her competitors jockeyed for position — some even resorting to stealing her answers to use during their own interviews later in a particular session — she did her best to rise above it.
What they didn’t know was that Wendy was simply biding her time — that when the right moment presented itself, she would outshine them all.
“Burt Bacharach asked, ‘Who is your favorite composer?’ I just sat there quietly and let the other girls go first. Miss Tennessee said, ‘John Lennon.’ Now, today, it makes sense, but back then, it was like saying Elvis Presley. And another girl said, ‘I don’t know.’ Well, I grew up in a family where everybody played a musical instrument. We had concerts. I mean, music was, ‘it.’ So I decided, since these girls have been stabbing me in the back, I thought, ‘I think I’ve got this one.’ I said, ‘Burt, it depends on my mood. If I’m happy, it’s Haydn. If I’m melancholy, it’s Debussy. If I really want my heart to open wide, it’s Tchaikovsky. But with all that said, give me Chopin any day of the week.’ And he winked at me. He knew.”
Bacharach was not the only one blown away by Wendy’s poise.
And when she answered the final question — “Tell us something we don’t know about you” — by telling those in the crowd that she was, first and foremost, “an individual,” it became a forgone conclusion that the crown was hers.
•
A mother with several children in tow stared at Wendy as she walked a makeshift runway that had been erected inside a shopping mall.
“You would see women … with five or six children around them and they would have this look on their face. I couldn’t tell if it was hate or, ‘My life sucks.’ Their kids would want an autograph or something, so I would sign them and I would say, ‘I just want to tell you that you have a really beautiful family and I think you have a really beautiful life. I hope one day I get to do what you’re doing,’” she said.
Looking back on those moments, it dawns on Wendy that perhaps, the women she spoke with thought she was just being nice.
But in reality, she longed for a sense of normalcy.
“People wanted to believe that you sit on this throne for a year and people just bestow gifts upon you. The truth is, you work your … ass off and you’re on this whirlwind tour selling stuff. You don’t do anything philanthropic or altruistic.”
And when she would try to reach out to those less fortunate — a group of children with special needs or combat-wounded Vietnam veterans — she was disciplined for it.
“They would fly me on a private jet back to New York and yell at me. They said I was being disloyal because every time I was in a photo, they were supposed to get paid. They made me cry really hard,” Wendy said. “But you know what? I’d get back on that plane and do it again.”
•
The trip to meet Elvis in Las Vegas, the photo shoots, and runway walks are not the memories that Wendy covets nearly 50 years after she won the pageant world’s most coveted crown.
Instead, she thinks about the day in Colorado when she lifted the spirits of Vietnam veterans who had lost limbs during the war.
“I said, ‘What do you all do for fun?’ None of them had legs, but I kept going. I said, ‘Don’t you go out in the snow?’ So we rented a fleet of snowmobiles. They would be on the front and I would be on the back and we spent a whole Sunday snowmobiling. On a snowmobile, it doesn’t matter if you have legs or not. It’s all in the hands,” she said. “And while I was there, I would ask questions. That’s what I do. That’s what I did with the judges and how I won. That’s what I did with those guys in Denver. It was genuine. I am a curious person. And I really did care.
“So I said, ‘Is war really the way we’re going to get peace?’ And I learned really quickly that when you lose body parts, you have to believe that. You have to believe that war is how you have peace. That broke my heart.”
And she remembers frank conversations with working women — particularly journalists — about their plight.
“I would say, ‘How does it work? I mean, you work with men, so are you paid the same?’” Wendy said. “They would laugh out loud. They would say, ‘We’re paid by the hour.’”
Those moments lit a fire inside her — one that burned hotter each time she granted an interview with those members of the press who were savvy enough to realize she would speak without a filter.
And during her reign, she took on Vietnam, religion, abortion and women’s rights.
“I felt like, ‘I have a platform here to speak from and it will go away in just a few months,’” Wendy said. “And I wanted it to go away, but why not, while I’ve got it, speak up?”
Reporters and the pageant brass were not the only ones who took notice.
Iconic feminist Gloria Steinem was among those who came to admire Wendy’s intellect, honesty and courage.
“She said, ‘I would love to have you work with our movement and the way you have chosen to do it is just fantastic,’” Wendy said. “I did it carefully, but I got a little more brash right toward the end.”
•
The day after she delivered a controversial farewell speech in front of a live audience and the millions who tuned in for the 1970 Miss U.S.A. Pageant, Wendy made what she considers one of the most important decisions of her life.
She would decline the dozens of interview requests that had been flooding in since she defied the pageant brass and pursue a normal life — perhaps settle down and have the kind of family she longed for each time she saw a woman with several children in tow at one of her runway shows.
Life, much like the process of transforming herself into a national treasure in 1969, wasn’t always easy, but she fought to ensure she made the best of even the darkest times.
When doctors told her they were skeptical about her ability to have children, she had three.
When her first marriage ended, she found true love with the “kind, sweet soul,” she shares her life with today.
Health issues — many, a result of her childhood polio battle — would leave her seconds from death on multiple occasions, but each time she fought her way back to health.
And though it seems, to those who know her, as if she has lived a million lives, she is convinced that her greatest moments have yet to unfold.
The crown is still intact.
The sash, stored away for use, perhaps by a daughter or granddaughter, as a Halloween costume.
There are photos and newspaper clippings.
But she let go of her title decades ago.
The truth is, Wendy doesn’t see her stint as Miss U.S.A. as a defining moment in her life.
And she hopes her legacy will be defined in far simpler terms.
The times she got to embrace one of her children or grandchildren.
The feeling that washed over her when she mounted her horse or scratched her poodle behind the ears.
Is there something bigger in store for her?
Perhaps.
And that knowledge that she has something more to offer the world than a crown is what drives her.
Just ask.
Wendy has never been shy about telling it like it is.
“My crowning achievement? It hasn’t happened yet,” she said. “But it will. And I’ll let you know.”
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