Pageant News Bureau - Miss USA 2004

A lovely puzzle

There's a mystery about Nicole Georghalli, one that even she doesn't know. We'll explain in a moment.

What everyone does know is that she's Miss Pennsylvania USA. Some people can tell you that she's a model. And a few may even know that she's half Greek and half Puerto Rican, a really interesting combination. (The last name is Greek.)

What most people don't know is that her name keeps coming up in our conversations with Miss USA contestants. It's a coincidence, surely, but kind of uncanny. Girls who know her well, those who are getting to know her and those who have barely met her tend to come around to mentioning her. She's somebody you ought to profile, one of them even told us. And this was not an old friend of hers.

Is it affection they feel for Ms. Georghalli? Is it awe? Is mentioning her name a kind of good luck charm? Who knows? But we love a mystery.

Laughing all the way

Amanda Pennekamp is in heaven. Actually it's Hollywood, but it feels like heaven.

This South Carolinian has wanted to be a movie star for about as long as she can remember, and competing in the Miss USA Pageant makes her feel almost giddy. "I've been a ham since Day One," she says. "I've always loved to be in front of a camera."

Photos courtesy of Miss Universe L.P., LLLP

She started acting and modeling when she was 14, and she's studying speech and theater in college. Her biggest previous title was Miss Sun Fun, which celebrates life on the South Carolina coast. She has also been a spokesmodel for a major furniture company.

She has already been to Los Angeles several times, and was in at least one movie we know of. It was a comedy called "Juwanna Mann," about a cross-dressing athlete.

She originally played a swimsuit girl in the movie, coming out of the water in slow motion, "but that got cut." (We hope the footage is still out there somewhere, for the sake of film preservation.) She wound up in the role of a Swedish masseuse, but she didn't have to try a Swedish accent.

Ms. Pennekamp won the Miss South Carolina USA title on her first try, and says "I haven't come down yet." She plans to make every contact she can during the pageant. The fact that she will have fun is a given.

We asked her how she liked being interviewed by PNB. "I love it, love it, love it!" she said. Just as we expected.

Good for business

If Jennifer Murphy were not competing in this pageant, she could probably do a good job of running it. She's very efficient, very savvy. We could imagine her being featured in a business newspaper, not just a celebrity sheet.

Wait, wait. As long as we're using our imagination, let's put this Oregon peach in a more glamorous setting. She would be ideal for a movie about a hard-charging businesswoman who suddenly takes off her glasses and lets down her hair. At long last, the boss realizes she's a knockout. (The office boys knew it all along.)

Photos courtesy of Miss Universe L.P., LLLP

Ms. Murphy is the second oldest of 13 children. She has been working since she was in high school, and her company named her manager of the year when she was 21. "I hire, train and manage a sales team" for a phone book company, she said. "We sell advertising. People are sometimes surprised how profitable a business it is."

Jennifer Murphy

She entered pageants because they might improve her marketability in the corporate world. "They helped me with my interview skills," she said. She stuck to the Miss America system for a while, finishing as second runner-up in that system's Miss Oregon Pageant last year. "Talent was my weakness," she said, in that businesslike way she has. "I was never professionally trained."

Then Ms. Murphy decided to diversify her pageant portfolio, and she entered the Miss Oregon USA Pageant. She kept if from her friends, not wanting them to be disappointed a second time. You can guess what happened. "I won," she said plaintively, "and they weren't there!" For a moment, she didn't sound businesslike at all.

A royal rarity

"Crown versus Parliament." That's one of the central disputes of English history. People went to war, started revolutions, got their heads chopped off in this argument. They took it seriously.

Could those people have foreseen that someday a girl named Parliament would wear a crown? Probably not. But until a few months ago, Andrea Parliament couldn't have foreseen it herself.

Photos courtesy of Miss Universe L.P., LLLP

The most fame this elementary education student ever expected to gain was as a softball player. She plays second base at the University of Sioux Falls in South Dakota, and she's excellent. She can hit from either side, "and I'm good at bunting and dragging."

But softball didn't satisfy her yen for glamour. She worked as a lifeguard for several summers (at a pool, since beaches are scarce in South Dakota), and she always liked being in a swimsuit. Furthermore, she liked people noticing her in a swimsuit. She thought she might just want to be a model. If only she could.

Pageants were a way to get started on her dream, but she never thought she would do so well so fast. Now she's in Los Angeles for the first time, and she wants to do it all, modeling, acting, the works.

We told her they play hardball at this level of pageants, but she just laughed. She came to play.

The class is all hers

Sometime it's fate, and sometimes it's a man. For Michelle Fongemie, it was a man.

She wouldn't be Miss Vermont USA if her fiancé hadn't persuaded her to move to Vermont a few years ago. She had grown up in Maine, gotten her first college degree in Massachusetts and finished graduate school in New York (where she met him).

Last year was the first time she ever competed, and she doesn't think she would have gotten into pageants at all if she had been somewhere besides the Green Mountain State. "The Vermont pageant scene is very open," she says. She always thought of herself as unattractive, "a regular-sized little schoolteacher with six cats," but people encouraged her to give it a try. Good advice.

Photos courtesy of Miss Universe L.P., LLLP

Ms. Fongemie has a sweet, smooth voice. Because of where she lives, we can't resist saying her voice is like maple syrup, which is the corniest comparison in the world. But the voice really is a treat. We'd like to hear it in commercials.

Right now she's doing her talking at a large Vermont high school. English is her subject, but she was a journalism major in college, and she's the newspaper and yearbook adviser, too. Writing is important to her, and even the best writer can use a little exposure. Pageants have been a windfall in that department.

A lot of the Miss USA contestants this year make no bones about wanting to be in show business. Ms. Fongemie says she's not interested in that at all. Well, it's her choice. America certainly needs good teachers and writers. But it can always use another bombshell, too.