Venus Ramey

Venus Ramey (b. September 26 1924, Ashland, Kentucky [cite web |url=http://www.johnsoncountykyhistory.com/people/RS.html |title=Johnson County History... and That's a Fact |accessdate=2007-04-20] ) was Miss America in 1944, and was the first red-haired contestant to win the title.cite web | url= http://www.missamerica.org/our-miss-americas/1940/1944.asp | title= Miss America History 1944 | accessdate = 2006-12-30]

Ramey competed as Miss District of Columbia and worked during her reign to help win suffrage for Washington D.C. in 1945. Later, she became the first Miss America to run for public office, seeking a seat in the Kentucky House of Representatives.

She was wooed by Hollywood in 1947, but disgusted with show business, she returned home to her Kentucky tobacco farm (which she has maintained for over fifty years). She married and raised two sons.

In the 1970s, Ramey successfully campaigned to save Over-the-Rhine, a neighborhood in Ohio. The neighborhood was eventually listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and her work led her to make an unsuccessful bid for a spot on the Cincinnati City Council.

Ramey was critical of later Miss America winners Vanessa L. Williams (1984) and Kate Shindle (1998), calling the former a "slut" for posing nude in a photo shoot, and blasting the latter for her support of condom distribution in schools. (In an open letter to Shindle, Ramey charged "there is a name for girls who hand out condoms, and it isn't Miss America.") [cite web |url=http://www.cosmicbaseball.com/vanessa9.html |title=Vanessa Williams: Miss America 1984a |date=1999-09-09 |accessdate=2007-04-20]

In April 2007, Ramey confronted intruders who had entered a storage building on her farm where thieves had previously stolen equipment. She used a snub-nose .38 revolver to shoot out the tires on their pickup truck, then flagged down a car and had the driver call 911, holding the would-be-thieves until the sheriff arrived. "I didn't even think twice. I just went and did it," she said. "If they'd even dared come close to me, they'd be six feet under by now." [cite web |url=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18237342/print/1/displaymode/1098 |title="Armed Miss America 1944 stops intruder" |date=April 20, 2007 |accessdate=2007-07-03]

The resulting notoriety led to an appearance on the "Tonight Show" with Jay Leno. Asked how she had learned to use a gun, Ramey shot back, "I'm from Kentucky!" Leno then asked her opinion of President George W. Bush, to which she replied, "I think he's a spoiled-brat rich kid that needs a spanking."

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