SHIRLEY — Phyllis Young can cross one more thing off her bucket list — to participate in one of Corrine Weatherly’s pageants.
Weatherly is the longtime manager of the Van Buren County Fair in Clinton, which sponsors various categories of the fair queen pageant, including the Senior Mrs. Van Buren County Fair Queen competition.
Young, 66, won that competition Sept. 12 and will vie for the Senior Mrs. Arkansas State Fair Queen title Saturday in the Arkansas Building at the state fairgrounds in Little Rock. The contest is for women 61 and older, married or widowed.
Young is a former vice president and now secretary of the Van Buren County Fair Association and has known Weatherly for about 10 years.
“I’ve worked at the county fair for several years now and have always wanted to be in one of her pageants,” Young said with a laugh. “It’s been on my bucket list of things to do.”
Young said this is the third year for the Senior Mrs. Van Buren County Fair Queen competition.
“It used to be just the Mrs. Van Buren County Fair Queen pageant and was for women 20 and older,” Young said.
“There is no way I would have walked with 25- to 30-year-olds,” she said.
“They revamped it,” Young said. “Now the Mrs. competition is for contestants 40 to 60, and the Senior Mrs. competition is for those 61 and older.
“I was the oldest one on stage,” she said.
Young said organizers on the state and county levels are “looking for ambassadors for the county and state fairs to talk about agriculture, livestock and the [creative] arts, as well as focus on youth development and youth growth.”
“The mission of our county fair is to focus on the youth,” Young said.
“I had a lot of fun in the contest,” Young said. “I’m expecting a lot of competition at the state fair. It will be fun.”
The state contest will include a private interview with the judges and competitions in “fair” attire (“something you would wear to the state fair or rodeo,” according to the rules) and evening gown, as well as an onstage question, which is to be answered with a 30-second response. Interviews will begin at 11:30 a.m. Saturday, and the winner will be announced later that afternoon.
Young said she had to answer an onstage question during the Senior Mrs. Van Buren County Fair Queen competition.
“The question was, ‘What was the most critical impact event in your life?’
“Not having children, my answer was ‘going to work for Southwestern Bell in 1966,’” Young said.
Young, who was born in Little Rock and grew up in the Levy area of North Little Rock, said she went to work for the telephone company right after she graduated from Ole Main High School in North Little Rock.
“I graduated on a Friday and went to work the following Monday,” she said. “I started out as a clerk in the data center in Little Rock.
“I had the opportunity to move to St. Louis with my job with the divestiture of the Bell System. I retired when I was 50 after 30-plus years with the company. When I retired, I was in a middle-management position with AT&T at its national headquarters in Bedminster, New Jersey.”
In addition to her positions in Little Rock and St. Louis, Young also spent several years in Atlanta, Georgia, before moving to Bedminster.
Young said her retirement was the result of a buyout offered by the company.
“It was great timing,” she said, adding that she met her husband, Doug, in Bedminster.
“He retired from Lucent, which was part of the old Bell System,” Young said. “He is from Little Rock, graduated from Joe T. Robinson High School in 1965 and started his career in Little Rock, too, but we never knew each other. He moved to New Jersey about the same time I did.
“When we married, Doug was 50, and I was 49. It was his first marriage and my second. It’s been good. I say God gave me Doug for patience.
“He has been so supportive of me. Not long after I retired, my dad could no longer take care of his affairs, so we came back here so I could take care of him. I had a good year or year and a half before he died.”
Young is the only child of the late Ray Harper and Louise Wetzler Harper. Young’s grandparents, the late James Alvin Harper and Josephine Bradford Harper, were early settlers of the area. All are buried in the nearby Bradford Cemetery.
The Youngs live in and are remodeling a house on Banner Mountain Road that her parents built in the Pleasant Valley community near Shirley in the 1970s.
“Doug calls this the ‘suburb of Shirley,’” Young said. “He loves it here. He’s doing all the remodeling himself.
“We love the farm,” she said, adding that they own 123 acres, including the original 40 acres her father inherited from his father, plus land the couple bought from some of her cousins. “But I have to have the city sometimes, so it’s not too far. We love our church, too. We attend Kirk of the Hills Presbyterian Church in Fairfield Bay.”
Young said they visited the Van Buren County Fair “about the first or second year after we retired here.”
“I was looking at the creative arts entries. I was doing counted cross stitch at the time,” she said. “I thought, ‘I really like this. I think I’ll come help out here.’
“Now, I am the chairman of the creative arts department and am on the fair board,” she said. She also serves on the Bradford Cemetery Association Board of Directors and is active in Decoration Day activities at that cemetery, as well as at the Settlement Cemetery.
The Youngs raise a big
garden each year, and she cans and freezes the bounty. She also enjoys quilting and sewing.
Not only will Young compete in the Senior Mrs. Arkansas State Fair Queen pageant; she will also compete in the creative arts department with a quilt, a wall hanging and four jars of canned goods that won Best of Show ribbons at the Van Buren County Fair.