National Sweetheart
Miss National Sweetheart is a United States beauty pageant created in 1941 where runners-up from the Miss America state pageants are invited to Hoopeston, Illinois to compete for the title of Miss National Sweetheart.
The event, which has no official ties to the Miss America Organization, is sponsored by the Hoopeston Jaycees and is held on Labor Day weekend in conjunction with the town's Sweetcorn Festival. Most contestants placed first runner-up in their state pageant, however second and other runners-up are invited if the first runner-up chooses not to attend. The winner of the National Sweetheart title receives a $1000 scholarship and a pendant shaped like an ear of corn.
Winning this title does not guarantee that a contestant will win a Miss America state title, but since 1980, five Miss National Sweetheart winners have gone on to win both their state and the Miss America title. A few have won state titles in different states from those they represented at National Sweetheart.
Read more about National Sweetheart: Winners
Famous quotes containing the words national and/or sweetheart:
“You are, or you are not the President of The National University Law School. If you are its President I wish to say to you that I have been passed through the curriculum of study of that school, and am entitled to, and demand my Diploma. If you are not its President then I ask you to take your name from its papers, and not hold out to the world to be what you are not.”
—Belva Lockwood (1830–1917)
“So, my sweetheart back home writes to me and wants to know what this gal in Bombay’s got that she hasn’t got. So I just write back to her and says, “Nothin’, honey. Only she’s got it here.””
—Alvah Bessie, Ranald MacDougall, and Lester Cole. Raoul Walsh. Sergeant Tracey, Objective Burma, to a buddy (1945)