Word: deford
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ALEX, THE LIFE OF A CHILD by Frank Deford Viking; 196 pages; $13.95 Many of us have convinced ourselves that children don't die anymore, not in the latter half of the 20th century, not in the United States of America, and certainly not in the suburbs." But of course they do, as Journalist and Novelist Frank Deford piercingly recounts in this spare and vivid eulogy to his daughter Alexandra, "Alex," who died in 1980 of cystic fibrosis...
Yolande Betbeze (1951) recalled to Miss America Chronicler Frank Deford just how silly the year could become. She was sent to Paris with a vial of water from the Hudson River. To symbolize Franco-American friendship, she was to pour it into the Seine. She remembered that "all the damn water ran out of the vial on the plane over, and I had to refill it with water from the faucet in my hotel...
Miss America by Frank Deford...
Yolande Betbeze was not only aware of her role when she won in 1950, she also used it effectively and profitably. Deford grants her the distinction of being the most acquisitive Miss America. When her home town, Mobile, Ala., wanted to honor her, she put a price on her appearance and noted, "Checks preferred." But Yolande was also one of the most liberal and active winners. By the early 1960s she was working for the N.A.A.C.P., CORE and SANE. Much to the dismay of pageant managers, she was on the picket line at the first lunch-counter...
...addition to lively anecdotes, Deford, a SPORTS ILLUSTRATED editor, provides mundane business details and splendidly unmemorable facts: Arizona's Jacque Mercer, the 1949 queen, was not only the lightest winner, at 106 lbs., and the second shortest, 5 ft. 3 in., but the last contestant not born in a hospital. Hefty appendices should be especially valuable to 25th century anthropologists. They contain such data as winners' measurements, figure trends (waists getting narrower, hips and busts balancing at the ideal of 35½-22½-35½), and the fact that there have been 228 contestants whose first names...