The seeds for the first Junior Miss competition were sowed more than a decade before Whitenack received her crown and sash. "We'll get another 15 minutes of fame," she joked. She'll be honored at a banquet at the Battle House Hotel tonight after the competition ends. Whitenack is one of dozens of past Junior Miss contestants and winners in town for the golden anniversary. She arrived Friday and will be in attendance tonight when one of this year's 50 contestants is named the 50th America's Junior Miss. Now, 50 years after the program was founded and 49 years after the first pageant, Whitenack again boarded a plane for Mobile. Whitenack won the competition, earning a $5,000 scholarship and becoming the first-ever America's Junior Miss. It's a risky venture for 17-year-olds to get on an airplane and fly to Mobile having no idea what they're getting themselves into."
"I was wondering what I was getting myself into," Whitenack recalled last week from her home in Scottsdale, Ariz. The 17-year-old was on her way with her parents to a town she had barely heard of to compete in a scholarship competition she knew little about. In the spring of 1958, Phyllis Whitenack climbed aboard an airplane in her hometown of Bluefield, W.Va.
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