Lu Parker

Frances Louise "Lu" Parker was born in Anderson, South Carolina. She attended the College of Charleston and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English. She then went on to receive a Masters of Art in Education from The Citadel. After graduating, Parker taught English Literature at North Charleston High School.

Her first television broadcasting job was for WCSC-TV in Charleston, South Carolina, where she was an education reporter and fill-in anchor.

Pageants participation

After winning Miss South Carolina USA, Parker was crowned Miss USA in 1994 becoming the third South Carolinian to be awarded the honor. She continued on to compete in the Miss Universe Pageant in Manila, Philippines and was among the top 6 finalists, finishing 4th overall.

Initially, Parker was one of the front runners in the pageant placing fifth at the conclusion of the preliminaries. During the semifinal competition, she ranked fourth in swimsuit, sixth in the semi-final interview and seventh in evening gown for an overall semifinal placement of sixth. Due to a technical glitch a score of 9.729 was shown as her semi-final average to the television audience (Venezuela’s Minorka Mercado was the correct recipient of the said average score) and Parker’s semi-final average was 9.561.

After the final 6 interview one of the judges, Emilio T. Yap, failed to award her with any points. Despite the said judge failure to award her any points, the highest and lowest scores are eliminated and the rest are averaged.

At the end of the final six interviews the rankings are as follows:
#Colombia
#Venezuela
#India
#USA
#Slovak Republic
#Philippines

Life after Miss USA

In San Antonio, KABB TV hired Parker to serve as a weekend anchor and reporter. Parker was promoted to main anchor in 2000. She obtained a job as the host for San Antonio's "Great Day SA" (Executive Producer Luis Munoz) February 2003 which is San Antonio's top-rated live entertainment morning show. In January of 2005, she joined Frank Buckley to co-anchor KTLA's "KTLA Prime News" on weekends. In 2007, Lu began to co-anchor the weekday "KTLA Morning News" at 5:00 A.M and 6:00 A.M. with Cher Calvin. In January, 2008 she became the main weather anchor for "KTLA Prime News" Then She Was Replaced By Markina Brown.

Parker has made appearances on "Larry King Live" and E! Entertainment Television. She also supports the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA).

External links

* [http://www.luparker.com/ Lu Parker.com]
* [http://ktla.trb.com/news/local/newsstaff/ktla-news-bios-parker,0,151086.story?coll=ktla-newsstaff-1 KTLA Page]
* [http://www.pageant-almanac.com/ Pageant Almanac]

Miss Universe Organization titleholders
Year=1994
Miss Universe=Sushmita Sen
Miss USA=Lu Parker
Miss Teen USA=Shauna Gambill