BeBe Shopp, from Hopkins

Hopkins, Minnesota

As of the census of 2000, there were 17,145 people, 8,224 households, and 3,741 families residing in the city. The population density was 4,205.9 people per square mile . There were 8,390 housing units at an average density of 2,058.2 pe square mile...

, Minnesota

Minnesota

Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...

, was Miss America in 1948.

Shopp was the first Miss America crowned in an evening gown after the pageant was resurrected in 1935.

Famous Quote

Los Angeles Times 1949: "The bathing beauty queen...blond Bebe Shopp, 18, of Hopkins, Minn...got an enthusiastic welcome in Paris, but she said she hasn't changed her mind about French swim suits. ... 'I don't approve of Bikini suits for American girls,' Bebe told her French interviewers. 'The French girls can wear them if they want to, but I still don't approve of them on American girls.'"

Background

Bebe Shopp lives in Rockport, MA and is known by her married name Beatrice "Bebe" Waring. She was a lay minister in the Episcopal Church and a TV spokeswoman for an electric scooter company. She used her pageant scholarship to attend the Manhattan School of Music. She specialized in the vibraharp, and graduated with a degree in percussion in 1952. She sang with Share the Music and the Cape Ann Symphony Chorus. She was active in community affairs, and headed the board of directors for Gloucester Stage Company. With her husband Bayard D. Waring, she had four daughters.

In 2009, Shopp and other former beauty pageant winners visited U.S. military forces in Kuwait and Afghanistan.

External links

^{http://www.missamerica.org/our-miss-americas/1940/1948.aspx}