Heather Whitestone
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Heather Whitestone-McCallum (born February 24, 1973 in Dothan, Alabama) is a beauty queen who was the first deaf Miss America title holder, having lost her hearing at the age of eighteen months.
Whitestone was born and raised in Dothan for the first eleven years of her life. She went to Central Institute for the Deaf in 1984 when she was doing poorly in the mainstream environment. At CID, she improved her reading by six grade levels in just three years and eventually graduated in 1987. Whitestone moved to Birmingham at age sixteen following her parents' divorce. Whitestone attended the Alabama School of Fine Arts for a year and graduated from Berry High School (now Hoover High School) in 1991.
Whitestone competed in many beauty pageants, winning the Shelby County Junior Miss pageant, as well as winning the Miss Point Mallard competition three years in a row, finally winning the Miss Alabama title in 1994. She was the first deaf woman to win this title.
Whitestone represented Alabama at the Miss America 1995 pageant held in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Despite being profoundly deaf, she performed ballet en pointe to the song "Via Dolorosa" as her talent,[1] winning the preliminary talent competition, as well as the preliminary swimsuit competition. She was the first double preliminary winner from Alabama since 1985. When she was crowned Miss America 1995, she could not hear host Regis Philbin say her name, and it was not until the first runner-up gestured to her that she realised she had won.[2]
Since her win, she completed her studies at Jacksonville State University, and has promoted awareness of deaf issues. She has also spoke 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. She said that she has not regretted her decision, thanking her family for supporting her. She currently lives in Atlanta with her husband John McCallum, a former Congressional aide, and her two children.
Whitestone's mother, Daphne Gray, noted in the book she wrote on her daughter, Today's Heroes: Heather Whitestone, that she is highly criticized in the Deaf community for her choice to speak and read lips instead of signing. Although the book claims Whitestone wanted to sign at first, her mom refused to allow it. Whitestone does know sign language now, but she is reported to speak out against it.
She also speaks highly of her experiences in classical dance, something that she had excelled in since she was a child.
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| Preceded by: Kimberly Clarice Aiken |
Miss America 1995 |
Succeeded by: Shawntel Smith |
