Miss America plans two local appearances

This story originally appeared on the front page of the Nov. 17, 1989 issue of The Press Advertiser. — Editor

She’s 24. Stands five-feet-seven-inches tall without her crown and she’s coming to Farmington on Tuesday, Nov. 21. She’s Debbye Turner, Miss America 1990.

A fact sheet supplied by the Miss America Pageant says the former Miss Missouri will visit the Presbyterian Home for Children at 8 a.m. and then present an address at Farmington High School at 9 a.m. A press conference at the Farmington High School Library is slated for 9:45.

The Farmington appearance follows stops in Charleston, Malden, Kennett and Dunklin on Monday.

The brown-eyed beauty, who’s hometown is Columbia, was once a dean’s list scholar at Arkansas State University. Her plans to become a veterinarian are temporarily on hold while she fulfills the obligations of the title she won this September. She is expected to return to her senior year classes at the University of Missouri-Columbia Veterinary School after her year-long committment to her country is completed.

Special training that Turner’s brief biography lists includes: percussion, 10 years; gospel and university choir, eight years; marimba, eight years; piano, six years; gymnastics, four years; and ballet, two years.

Her future ambition is reportedly to obtain a Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine, followed by an internship and residency program specializing in small animal internal medicine. As a veterinary school student she has had the opportunity to treat everything from a four-day-old Vietnamese pot-bellied piglet to a 2,000 pound Hereford Bull.

As Miss America, she’ll have ample opportunity to tell of those experiences while touring the nation. She is said to be particularly interested in telling America’s youth to resist peer pressure and to strive to meet their own goals.

Debbye Turner – Miss America 1990