Miss Alabama Takes the Miss America 2005 Title!

Alabama is filled with beautiful women and one of them just got the highest honor for beauty, brains, talent and community service. Deidre Downs, 23, of Birmingham and the 2004 Miss Alabama, won the title of Miss America 2005 during an ABC televised competition on September 18. Deidre Downs, Miss Alabama, was also one of three Miss American contestants honored for their community service as recipients of the 2004 Quality of Life Awards.

Downs received top honors and a $6000 scholarship for her work creating the Making Miracles Program, designed to raise awareness and funds in the fight against cancer in children. Barchas, the First Runner-up, earned a $4,000 scholarship for writing A Dad Just Like Mine, a children's book inspired by her father, who is physically disabled. Muto won Second Runner-up honors and a $3000 scholarship for creating H.E.L.P.ing Children Overcome Adversities, teaching children to use negative circumstances to initiate positive change.

Downs, a graduate of Samford University, is an aspiring pediatrician beginning medical studies at University of Alabama's School of Medicine next year. Her passion to help kids with cancer was ignited when she visited Camp Smile-a-Mile, a Birmingham summer camp for children with cancer. That experience inspired her to volunteer at the Children's Hospital of Alabama Cancer Unit. Seeing the positive effect working with the children and families had on herself, she created Making Miracles as a means for high school students to volunteer to work directly with childhood cancer patients.

The more she learned about pediatric cancer, the more she realized that research funding would be the key to making strides in treatment, detection and prevention. This understanding led her to shift the focus on Making Miracles from volunteerism to establishing a permanent funding source for research. Her creativity and innovation paid off in the form of Alabama's Curing Childhood Cancer license plate. Downs both designed the plate and worked diligently with the health care community, state legislature and the media to bring the program to fruition. Today, every $50 Curing Childhood Cancer license plate sold in Alabama adds $41.25 to fund research in the fight against childhood cancer.

Downs becomes the third Miss Alabama to become Miss America. In 1951, Yolande Bethbeze of Mobile, Alabama was chosen Miss America and in 1995 Heather Whitestone from Birmingham, Alabama was crowned Miss America. Whitestone was also the first deaf Miss America.

Not only the Miss America but also the Mrs. America title is held by the state of Alabama this year! On September 7th, the 2004 Mrs. Alabama, Julie Love Templeton of Tuscaloosa, was crowned Mrs. America 2005. The Mrs. America Pageant will be televised September 27 on PAX-TV from 8 to 10 p.m. Huntsville resident, Stace Willis was the 1999 Mrs. America.