Originally aired April 30, 2001

Last year a Miss America contestant made news because she had just one arm. Would that tradition-bound pageant be ready for a beauty queen in a wheelchair? If your first reaction was "probably not," then the response from the disabled community is "why not?"

With that question in mind, Nebraska revived a pageant this year designed to break some stereotypes. "Statewide's" Bill Kelly says the disabled community borrowed the trappings of a familiar American event, and made it their own to prove a point.

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TRANSCRIPT

Transcript of Perspective

TRANSCRIPT - Ms. Wheelchair

Reported by Statewide correspondent, Bill Kelly


It might seem easy to dismiss it all as a novelty… as just another pageant. The hotel ballroom, dark and sparkling. The veneer of glitz and glamour and schmaltz was all quite intentional. This was Cathy Carvers dream.
[Cathy Carver/ Ms. Wheelchair Nebraska 2001] "We are no longer a population to be pitied, or felt sorry for but one to be embraced and welcomed into the community for who we are."
Tonight, Ms. Wheelchair would give up her crown to a new spokesperson for the disabled community. And the five contestants waiting back stage… some even a bit skeptical when they signed on… admitted they found all this pretty exciting. They really have one woman to thank. Even as she relishes the title, Cathy Carver admits she's an unlikely candidate to be a Ms. Anything.
[Carver] "I'm not the tiara wearing kind of girl."
[Bill Kelly/Reporter] "And here you're wearing a tiara!"
[Carver] " Its still kind of fun though. I still like dressing up, and this has given me the opportunity. Its almost like being another person when you dress up and put this crown on and what not."
Cathy was an energenic ten years old when a stack of plywood fell on her and broke her back. The parallysis slowed her, but does not keep her from the things she really loves... like riding her motorcycle.
[Carver] "I've had a lot of people without disabilities say I have inspired them. Just because wow I have a disability and look what I am doing with my life, and what am I doing with my life and I have maybe more to be grateful for. That's how they look at it. I don't know. Sometimes I think I have more to be grateful for!"
Monday through Friday, Cathy is on the job with a state agency helping the disabled find the money for equipment or services they need to get along. Her service dog Cappiciano remains her side every step of the way.
She never gave much thought about being a public spokesperson for the disabled until the reigning Ms. Wheelchair America corraled her at a conference. Since Nebraska did not have an active pagaent, Cathy could apply for the title. Ms Wheelchair Nebraska received her crown in a high school gym during half time at a wheelchair basketball game. She wasn't entirely prepared for what holding that title really meant.
[Carver] "I love to sing in this building. 'Oh say can you see….'"
With, or without the crown, Cathy is not a shy person. But the tiara and the title gives her something extra: an excuse to be heard.
[Craver] "What I think I like more than that part of it is that people ask me how I feel about stuff and I get to tell them. There were a lot of times when I used to tell people how I would feel about things or what my opinions were, but nobody cared, it kind of fell on deaf ears but now all of a sudden are asking me and they are paying attention."
[Bill Kelly] "The title makes a difference."
[Carver] "It does make a difference."
The Ms. Wheelchair Nebraska program is not a beauty pagent. It is an opportunity for women who use wheelchairs to show their accomplishments…
[Governor Johanns] "It is my pleasure to proclaim the tenth day of March as Ms Wheelchair Nebraska Day. And thank you for representing our state."
Cathy took to heart her role as a spokesperson for the disabled… a group with a voice often ignored. It came as a surprise that she could inspire others.
[Carver] "Then I guess there came a time when I started looking at some of the things I had done and I guess I had to pat myself on the back. And say you know I could have not done these things and I could have stayed at home and stay on social security, and a lot of people do decide to do that. And that's a choice, and I chose to live life to the fullest and sometimes we need to tell people, hey, that's a great accomplishment …."
You hear the same sentiment from each of the five women in line for the title. Kelly Wilson learned she would never walk again on her 16th birthday after a car crash in Tecumseh. She has never looked back.
[Kelly Wilson/ Contestant] "Being in a wheelchair has helped me become who I am, has helped me become this strong person who I am. Its helped me to realize that there are more important things in life than the use of your legs."
Just another single mom finishing her Masters in Music Education. Her five year old daughter takes for granted what her mom can do everyday. Kelly hopes the rest of the world can be just as open minded… even others in the disabled community.
[Wilson] "I had a girl come up to me a few weeks ago, around Christmas and tell me that she was so glad to see me out. And I go, thank you. And she said, my fiancee is in a wheel chair and he doesn't like to go out very much. He is embarrased by it. And I thought that's not… It doesn't stop me from doing a thing."
And nothing stops Cindy Howden. Thirteen years ago she was thrown and trampled by a race horse. Doctors first believed her broken neck killed her. Next they predicted she would be a quadrapalegic. They've stopped telling her what she won't be able to do.
[Cindy Howden/ Contestent] "My orthopedic surgeon told me there is no medical reason why you are still alive and he actually he said God and the devil left me behind because neither one of them wanted me."
Cindy works with the Nebraska State Department of Education, but her love is the small horse farm she runs…on her own… in Roca, Nebraska.
[Howden] "The animals. They don't care of I limp or as long as I feed them. Either do the dogs. And kids are wonderful because they say how come you walk funny. My biggest handicap aren't my physical limitations. It is the assumptions that people make just by looking at me. And those are much harder to overcome than the fact that I can't pick up my right leg very well. That's why this pageant felt like a natural fit. We'll see."
That's the whole point of the Ms Wheelchair Nebraska Pagaent. Cathy Carver wants other to give other women with disabilities the chance to show off. The five women who came forward to compete this year were exactly the type of accomplished, ambitiotious people the pagaent was created to showcase.
[Stephanie Lewis/ Contestent] "We're doing the same thing you're doing. We just do it a little bit slower. That's it!"
Stephanie Lewis, the medical receptionist from Omaha. Jeanette Banahan, the mental health therapist from Diller.
[Jeanette Banahan/ Contestent] "We're a minority anyway. We're women and then we are disabled women, so it's a double whammy. And so I always feel we are put down one more notch."
[Crystal Childers/ Contestent] "I was impressed. I'm thinking 'wow, look at these women that I am going to be associated with for a whole weekend.' So I was amazed."
Taking the cycle for a test drive is Crystal Childers…a seventh grade science teacher from Omaha. She already sees her competitors as compatriots.
[Childers] "But I need women who go through similair that I go through who I can talk to about girl stuff, and my girl friends do a great job of listening and understanding. But there is a part of me that I physically struggle with day in, day out and these gals understand that part. They understand the staring, the physical barrier, the interaction with men, they understand that more than my girlfriends would, so that's why I came, to meet more people."
With so many fascinating stories, the hard part was choosing just one woman to carry the title. A panel of three judges spent the weekend doing interviews with all of the contestents behind closed doors.
[Bob Alexander/ Pageant Judge] "I asked them a lot on the physical aspect of their accesibility, maybe what was the barriers that they had to go through."
[Banahan] "And I think I talk way too much. But its me. It's me. And if I can't win being me, than that's fine. I'll go off and be myself someplace else."
None of the contestants seemed to be phased by all the philisophical and sometimes nosey questions.
[Childers] "It should be terrifying, because they are all in there sitting at this table scrutinizing you. But I've never been really nervous, even as a little kid. And then after I got hurt, which would have been about eight years ago, I just got used to people asking me questions and kind of peeking into my life, so it really doesn't bother me."
Crystal had fifteen minutes to impress the judges. She was the last of the five to be interviewed behind closed doors.
[Childers] "I'm still smiling. I'm still smiling. That was a cinch."
Time and again, we were reminded that this was not a beauty pagent. And it isn't. Which is not to say that everyone of the contestants on hand did not really look forward to the opportunity that evening to show the world that they are beautiful.
[Childers] "So sometimes when you are disabled you tend to fall into that little box that everyone has made for you. And this is our way to step out of that box and say, hey, we are women, just like everyone else, and we love to dress up and put on make up and feel pretty and goregous!"
It was the kind of elegent evening that Cathy Carver envisioned…. a far cry from the basketball court coronation she had a year earlier. Backstage, the five contestants waited…joking and surprisingly at ease. They did not know that the entire field was nearly tied for first place. The two questions each would answer on stage rose above the ceremonial. Their answers would decide the title.
First a serious question. What would Kelly Wilson say if someone complained this pagaent did nothing but drum up sympathy for the disabled.
[Pagent Judge] "How do you respond?"
[Kelly Wilson/ Contestent] "First of all, I don't like sympathy. Its not a program to get to get sympathy for anything. It's a program to show women and other people with disabilities exactly what they can do with their life."
Then a more light-hearted question… like Cindy Howden's funny story about how people react to a wheelchair.
[Cindy Howden/ Contestent] "…and the teller said to me in a real loud, slow voice, 'Do you want me to write your check for you?' Well, my initial reaction was I wanted to poke her eyes out, but I could tell she meant well, so I said to her, 'no but I have a term paper you can finish."
A simple question… name a favorite sound… illicited a surprising response from Crystal Childers.
[Childers] "I think the sound that I probably enjoy the most is sound my wheelchair my wheel chair makes when I go to my parents house, and it kind of goes ca-thunk, ca-thunk, ca-thunk. And the reason I enjoy that noise is that is the noise my wheelchair makes when it goes up the ramp my dad made for me at their accesible house…."
It may be that nearly poetic answer that convinced the judges who should earn the title.
[Pageant Host] "You're Ms Wheelchair Nebraska 2001, is Crystal Childers…"
So there are parts of this pageant that… by design… are very much like a beauty pagaent, from the tiara to the tears.
[Crystal Childers/ Ms Wheelchair Nebraska 2001] "I was surprised, I really was. Because when I met all these girls and I found out what they had done in their lives, I thought no way that I am going to win, because I am in a group of such inspirational women, I had no idea."
The woman who wore the crown last year understands the message the winner… and the contest… should send to Nebraska.
[Carver] "We all come in shapes and sizes and colors and big and tall and small and whatever it really doesn't matter what the package is, its what's inside and who delivers that really counts."