Mary Ann Mobley, Lynda Mead prove beauty queens can succeed in life

I have the good fortune to have maintained continuing friendships with the University's first two Miss Americas, Mary Ann Mobley (Collins) and Lynda Mead (Shea), and to have taught Lynda. Both were highly intelligent young women. Mary Ann was our first Carrier Scholar, and Lynda was a splendid student.

Mary Ann, after her "Miss America" duties, went to Hollywood, appeared in several movies, and is still active in the world of entertainment. She married Gary Collins, also an entertainment personality, and their beautiful daughter, Clancy, a Stanford graduate, is an executive in one branch of the MGM entertainment empire. Mary Ann is on the executive board of a national foundation which funds research on Crohn's Disease and contributes generously to it. She also contributes time, talent and money to Ole Miss, always close to her heart.

After her year, Lynda returned to the campus to complete her degree, taught for a time and then married Dr. John Shea, owner of the Shea Clinic in Memphis -- who, incidentally, surgically restored my hearing in the late 1950's. After rearing five children, she opened a successful import store in Memphis, and with her staff does some major-league interior decorating. (She decorated the Barksdale-Isom House here.) Last year she and her husband made Ole Miss a magnificent donation of $100,000, the income to be used to help send Honors College students on foreign tours.

So beauty contest winners can be much more than pretty faces and figures -- although both Mary Ann and Lynda are still extraordinarily lovely women. I last saw Mary Ann two or three years ago, but dined with Lynda only some weeks back. Both kissed me.

Only on the cheek, it's true; but at 82 you are grateful for what you can get.

Charles E. Noyes
Professor Emeritus of English
Oxford