Heather Whitestone

Pageant titleholder bio
photo=
title= Miss Alabama 1994
Miss America 1995
nationalcompetition=Miss America 1995 (winner)
location= Dothan, Alabama
birthname= Heather Whitestone
birth= birth date and age |1973|02|24

Heather Whitestone McCallum (born February 24, 1973 in Dothan, Alabama) is a former beauty queen who was the first deaf Miss America title holder, having lost most of her hearing at the age of eighteen months.

Early life

Whitestone was born and raised in Dothan for the first eleven years of her life. Her passion was ballet and being handicapped allowed her to spend most of her time devloping her skills. Her mother, Daphne Gray, decided that her daughter would read lips and learn to speak (using what little hearing remained in her left ear) instead of learning to sign. She notes in her book "Today's Heroes: Heather Whitestone", that she has been greatly criticized in the deaf community for this decision. (See Manualism and oralism for an introduction to the relevant issues.) Although the book claims Whitestone wanted to sign at first, her mother refused to allow it. Whitestone does know sign language now, but she is reported to speak out against it.Fact|date=July 2008

In 1984, after doing poorly in mainstream education, Whitestone attended the Central Institute for the Deaf where she improved her reading by six grade levels in just three years and eventually graduated in 1987 with a 3.6 GPA.fact|date=August 2008 Whitestone moved to Birmingham at age sixteen, following her parents' divorce. She attended the Alabama School of Fine Arts for a year and graduated from Berry High School (now Hoover High School) in 1991. She then went on to study at Jacksonville State University. ["Listening with My Heart", Heather Whitestone. Bantam Doubleday, New York, 1998. Pp 36-39.]

Pageant record

Whitestone competed in many beauty pageants, winning the Shelby County Junior Miss pageant. Her first year in the Miss America system, she won the Miss Jacksonville State University title and went on to be first runner up to Miss Alabama 1992, Kim Wimmer. The following year she won the Miss Point Mallard competition and once again, placed first runner up to Miss Alabama, Kalyn Chapman (who had placed as Whitestone's first runner up at Point Mallard). The following year Whitestone won the Miss Cullman Area title and finally won the Miss Alabama title in 1994. She was the first deaf woman to win this title.

Whitestone represented Alabama at the 1995 Miss America pageant held in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Despite being profoundly deaf, she performed ballet "en pointe" to the song "Via Dolorosa" as her talent, winning the preliminary talent competition, as well as the preliminary swimsuit competition. She was the first double preliminary winner from Alabama since the 1978 Miss America pageant. That double winner, Teresa Cheatham, also a former Miss Point Mallard, was first runner up to Miss America, Kylene Barker of Virginia.

In 1995 the field again narrowed to Miss Alabama and Miss Virginia (Cullen Johnson). When the first runner up was announced, Whitestone could not hear host Regis Philbin but could read his lips. Surprised, she looked to her fellow contestant for confirmation that she had won. [As seen in footage of her win in the 2003 documentary "Journey Out of Silence: The Heather Whitestone Story".]

After Miss America

Since her Miss America win, Whitestone has completed her studies at Jacksonville State University and has continued to promote awareness of deaf issues. She has also spoken out in detail about her close relationship with God, one that she has had ever since she rediscovered church as a teenager. She wrote about her life experiences in a book called "Let God Surprise You: Trust God with Your Dreams".

In 2002, she courted controversy among the Deaf community when she decided to have a cochlear implant operation in order to hear to an extent in her right ear, something that she had never been able to experience before. Whitestone said the primary motivation for electing the surgery was an incident when she did not hear her son's cries for help. [ [http://www.heatherwhitestone.com/ Whitestone's official website] .] She said that she has not regretted her decision, thanking her family for supporting her.

In 2006, after losing residual hearing in her left ear, she received a second cochlear implant.

Whitestone currently lives in the Atlanta area with her husband John McCallum, a former Congressional aide, and three children.

References

External links

* [http://www.heatherwhitestone.com/ Heather Whitestone] — official website
* [http://www.geocities.com/athens/9385/heather.htm Miss America 1995 Philippine Visit in 1997] — MCCID Special Tribute Article