Pageant News Bureau - Lisa Wilson

Just the right note

Competition photos by Golden Photography, others by Joe Whiteko / PNB

Her name is Lisa. She lives in Rome. She has olive skin, lustrous black hair and an elegantly voluptuous figure. She sings like an angel.

So what's her last name? Manara? Bassano? Antonelli?

Sorry, but sometimes a partial description doesn't really tell the story. Lisa's last name is Wilson, and she lives not in Rome, Italy, but in Rome, Ga. And as for those gorgeous Mediterranean looks, she has no clue. They just run in her family.

"Maybe I'm partly Italian," she says in a breezy Southern accent, "but I've heard Cherokee Indian, too. I'm going to look into that." It's a delightful mystery.

There's a bit of mystery about her body as well. As we heard it, Ms. Wilson used to be heavy and considered herself unattractive. But she fell seriously ill as a girl, and took a long time to recover. She emerged completely healthy, and looking like a statue of a Roman goddess come to life.

But the voice is the thing. It's her pride, her joy, her secret weapon. When you hear her sing, she doesn't even need to be beautiful. Ms. Wilson wants to be a singing star, and pageants are just a way to keep her in the public eye until some excited music executive says, "Sign that girl!"

She has competed in Miss America preliminaries, where the talent was the fun part, and at Venus and Hawaiian Tropic, where all she had to do was show up to cause a stir. (Oddly enough, she has never competed at Miss Georgia USA, though Rome is where the pageant is held.)

Ms. Wilson would trade in all her bikinis for a big break at the microphone, but we don't think she will have to. If she doesn't become a singing star, there's something wrong with the ears of the world.

Rome, Ga., built on seven hills just like the Italian original, is one of the loveliest cities in the American South. And its two most famous citizens were independent-minded women. One was Martha Berry, born to prosperity, who devoted her life to educating the poor and founded an internationally renowned college. The other was Ellen Axson Wilson, an artist, intellectual and devoted wife and mother who became first lady of the United States.

Maybe someday, a third woman will be Rome's claim to fame. Another Wilson, we suspect. Could there be a relation? We're going to look into that.