MORAN — Sixteen precocious young ladies showed off their external beauty Saturday as part of the annual Moran Day celebration.
But it will be their inner beauty that’s most important as they grow older, the girls were told by Moran native and former Miss America Debra Barnes Snodgrass.
Snodgrass served as an honorary guest at Saturday’s Little Miss Moran Day pageant.
One by one, Barnes presented each of the youngsters with a crown, flower and small prize package before addressing the audience.
Perhaps a future Miss America may have been a part of the festivities, Snodgrass said.
She also lauded the children, who performed a dance number, as well as their parents for taking time to have their children become such an integral part of the Saturday pageant.
Snodgrass also lavished praise on Hanna Hoffman, who organized the event.
“Hanna has worked so hard putting this together,” Snodgrass said. “It was a tremendous event.”
Snodgrass grew up in Moran before attending Pittsburg State University, where she was convinced to enter the school’s first-ever pageant. She didn’t win, but did the next year. That led to her crowning as Miss Kansas and ultimately Miss America.
She now teaches music as Missouri Southern State University in Joplin, where many of her students usually are unaware of her past crowning glory.
Once they find out, however, they tend to have the same question.
“They’ll ask me to do the ‘wave,’” Snodgrass said, referring to the iconic wave pageant contestants offer to the audience while on stage. “I didn’t know we had our own wave.”
Snodgrass lives in Carthage, Mo., but a piece of her heart remains in Moran.
Returning to Moran is different than visiting other small communities, Snodgrass said, because while she’s asked frequently about her pageant experiences, she’s queried just as frequently about particulars in growing up in Moran.
“It’s always fun to get to come back,” she said.
