Maryline Blackburn was Miss Alaska, Sarah Palin Miss Congeniality

Maryline Blackburn was Miss Alaska 1984, Sarah Palin Miss Congeniality

Posted on: October 24th, 2008 by: Meg0 comments

Maryline Blackburn knew Sarah Palin before she became a household name in Alaska or the rest of the world. The two met in 1984 during the Miss Alaska pageant. Blackburn eventually won while Sarah Heath took second runner-up honors and was voted Miss Congeniality by her peers.

Diane Osbourne was a local pageant coach who worked with all of the girls prior to the big competition. She remembers Sarah Heath as a soft spoken 20 year old who was unobtrusive and seemed to lack the ‘go get-em’ attitude of most contestants. She admitted to being very surprised, shocked actually, by how well Sarah performed on stage.

According the Sarah’s mother, she wasn’t a high heels kind of girl and found the swimsuit competition painful. Maryline Blackburn has a different recollection. “She was a very sweet young lady who everybody liked. She had a look of determination, kind of a sizing people up even behind the smile.”

In any case, Sarah Palin has come a long way from Wasilla, Alaska all those years ago. The governor of Alaska has hit the biggest stage of all, some twenty-five years later. That’s quite a leap.

Elisabeth Hasselbeck will stump with Sarah in Florida.

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