Heather Whitestone

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Heather Whitestone Beauty pageant titleholder

Birth name:	Heather Whitestone
Birthdate:	February 24, 1973 (1973-02-24) (age 35)
Birth location:	Dothan, Alabama
Title(s):	Miss Alabama 1994 Miss America 1995
Major Competition(s):	Miss America 1995 (winner)

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 with a 3.6 GPA. 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. Her first year in the Miss America system, Heather won the Miss Jacksonville State University title and went on to be 1st runner up to Miss Alabama 1992, Kim Wimmer. The following year she won the Miss Point Mallard competition and once again, placed 1st runner up to Miss Alabama, Kalyn Chapman (who had placed as Heather's 1st runner up at Point Mallard. Kalyn then went on to win Miss Leeds Area pageant to be eligible to compete at Miss Alabama). The following year Heather 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 (to choose Miss America 1979) That double winner, Teresa Cheatham, also a former Miss Point Mallard, was 1st runner up to Miss America, Kylene Barker of Virginia. When Heather 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 realized she had won Since her win, she completed her studies at Jacksonville State University, and has promoted 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.

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

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 motivator for electing the surgery was an incident when she did not hear her son's cries for help. [1] 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'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. (See manualism and oralism.) 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.