Saturday's Internet Edition, May 17, 2008.
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At the time, Lawrence was totally unaware that she was about to be crowned Miss Thomasville by the winner of that Miss America pageant and within a year she would be on stage in Atlantic City “up there and doing that,” and more than holding her own. Lawrence wound up as the first runner up in the 1975 Miss America pageant.
“I felt like I had won,” Susan Lawrence Googe said in a telephone interview Friday about her experience in the ‘75 Miss America pageant. “When you compete against girls with 15 years training in whatever they were studying, they are extremely talented. To finish second out of 75,000 girls who entered a preliminary pageant across the country was OK.”
Susan Lawrence, a native of Midway, had no intention of entering any preliminary contest in 1974. But Maggie Lee Barney, a teacher at North Davidson High School, Lawrence’s alma mater, had other ideas. Barney actually filled out and turned in an application for Lawrence to compete in the Miss Thomasville pageant, much to her former student’s chagrin.
“I came home to my mother in tears that day,” Googe recalled of when she learned that she was expected to compete in a pageant. “I was not a pageant person and figured if I did not contact the Jaycees, they would go on without me.”
But shortly thereafter she got a call from a Thomasville Jaycee asking if her picture was ready to put in the program.
“I didn’t feel right telling them no,” Googe recalled. “I decided to look at it as a challenge and hoped that I wouldn’t embarrass myself.”
She didn’t. In the presence of both the reigning Miss North Carolina and the reigning Miss America, she won. Miss America crowned Lawrence Miss Thomasville.
“I think the judges saw some potential in me,” Googe said. “I was very raw at that point. “Pageant officials got people to work with me.”
One of them was Josef Walker, who now works at Thomasville Chevrolet Buick Pontiac and was involved in Miss North Carolina pageant activities for decades. Walker worked with Lawrence as her voice coach.
“Susan is a wonderful success story about what the Miss America program can do,” Walker said. “She’s well spoken, a great community leader and a wonderful human being.”
Susan Lawrence earned a degree in fashion design at King’s College and had been working a couple of years at Montaldo’s, an exclusive women’s clothing store in Winston-Salem.
“I think that’s one reason I did so well,” Googe said of her experience before pageant competition. “Most of the girls enter pageants at a younger age and are used to only talking with their peers. I had already been working for two years, dealing with the public, including older people.”
Nevertheless, she was “shocked” to win Miss North Carolina.
“We had two bus loads of people come up from Thomasville to the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City,” Googe remembered. “Every time I appeared on stage, there would be a lot of cheers.”
Now she lives in Lexington with her husband, Steve Googe, who is director of the Davidson County Economic Development Commission. Susan Googe does property management of commercial real estate that her family owns. Her career has included a lot of public relations work, including emceeing pageants and working on commercials for Brendles, J.C. Penney and other advertisers. She currently serves on the board of directors for Arts United, among other community activities.
“I’ve heard really good things about Jessica,” Susan Googe said about Jessica Jacobs, the current Miss North Carolina who is competing in the Miss America Pageant in Las Vegas. “Our pageant officials were very impressed with her. I certainly do wish her the best.”
The Miss America pageant will be televised tonight on TLC at 8 p.m. Jacobs, who was Miss Thomasville in 2006, also has been participating in Miss America Reality Check, a reality TV show, also televised on TLC, showing the Miss America contestants from all the states. What little Googe has seen of the Reality Check has not impressed her.
“I watch very little reality TV because to me, that’s not really reality,” Googe said. “I saw a portion of that one for Miss America, and it bothered me. They had the girls out running an obstacle course, which made them do some strange things. To me, that was degrading. I think it would have been more productive to show the girls working in their communities. If they had spent that TV time showing how talented those women are and what a difference they were making in their communities, it would have been much more realistic.”
Having coached pageant contestants in the years following her own completion, Googe feels the reality show detracts from the dignity of what Miss America really is.
“Most people have no clue that the Miss America program is the largest scholarship foundation in the world,” Googe said. “The process itself is relevant because the Miss America program is a self-improvement course.”
Staff Writer Kevin Reid can be reached at 472-9500, ext. 230, or at reid@tvilletimes.com.