The Strength of Grace, just released,
honors 38 Miss Americas!

This book is dedicated to these honorable women from small-town America to metropolitan cities who have unselfishly shared their personal, often painful lives within these pages in order to inspire others. The Miss America mystique isn't about fairy tales, it's about vision and purpose and spiritual strength and commitment. The Miss America Organization is the largest provider of scholarship monies for women in the world today. ($45 million in scholarships in 2003 throughout local, state and national competitions.) We would like to thank the Miss America Organization for its full and unfailing cooperation in the seven-year effort it took to bring this book to print.

"I lay in my hospital bed in ICU, afraid to fall asleep for fear I would die. I couldn't tell the doctor I was frightened, because I was unable to speak." -Jacquelyn Mayer, Miss America 1963, at 28, after suffering a stroke. Miss America 1963

Walking into a television studio where there was heavy competition for on-air spots, Debbye sensed the friction. Knowing how to spay a dog isn't going to help me now, she thought. Debbye Turner, DVM, Miss America 1990

Inside the mind and heart of that young woman was hidden a traumatized little girl who had been sexually molested by her successful, handsome, trusted father from the time she was five years old. "A list of my accomplishments, times one hundred, pales before the most significant accomplishment of my life: I survived incest." - Spoken on the night she broke her silence. Marilyn Van Derbur, Miss America 1958