Pageant contestants are ‘fully woman and fully warrior’

By Jeanne Brei, Special to The Sunday

Sunday, Oct. 18, 2015 | 2 a.m.

There are evening gowns, a talent competition, an interview question, a tiara and a sash — but don’t call Ms. Veteran America a beauty pageant. The judges don’t consider age, marital status or how a woman looks in a swimsuit when determining a winner.

These contestants all are active duty or military veterans using the competition to raise awareness about the challenges many women in the military face, including homelessness, post-traumatic stress disorder and sexual assault.

For instance, an estimated 55,000 female veterans are homeless, and female veterans are the fastest-growing homeless population in the United States.

The 25 finalists coming to Las Vegas for the Oct. 18 competition will be judged first on their military history and their advocacy for women in the military, then on their talent and interview answer. The pageant’s mission is to honor the contestants’ grace, poise and service, and raise money for Final Salute, a group that helps find housing for homeless female veterans and their children.

The competition is “a place for us to be fully woman and fully warrior with great camaraderie with our fellow sisters-in-arms,” said competitor Kerri Brantley, a public affairs officer in the National Guard from Boise, Idaho.

Brantley, a mother of three, calls joining the National Guard the best decision of her adult life.

“It’s the way I finished school and supported my kids as a single mom for six years,” she said.

Brantley spent nine months in the Middle East but considers her most rewarding work rescuing people and recovering bodies last year after the Oso landslide in Washington.

Shan Anderson became involved in the Ms. Veteran America competition because of a direct connection to homeless veterans.

“My cousin was a homeless female veteran, and one of my sorority sisters is currently,” Anderson said. “I have been assisting them for several years and never knew an organization was here to help.”

Anderson, whose mother served in the Air Force, joined the Mississippi Army National Guard in 1998 at age 17. Deployments took her to Iraq in 2009, the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington, D.C., in 2010 and Afghanistan in 2013. She plans to attend law school next year.

During the first Ms. Veteran America pageant in 2012, the youngest contestant was 21 and the oldest — World War II Coast Guard veteran Gladys Hughes, of Picayune, Miss. — was 89. Hughes will serve as a judge this year, along with the U.S. Marine Corps’ first black female combat pilot and the first woman in the U.S. Army Reserve to reach the rank of command sergeant major. The mistress of ceremonies is a Purple Heart recipient who lost both legs after a roadside bomb struck her armored vehicle in Baghdad.

The founder of both Final Salute and Ms. Veteran America, Jas Boothe, was based in New Orleans preparing to deploy to Iraq in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina hit. Less than a month later, she was diagnosed with cancer in her head, neck and throat, and was discharged from the Army Reserves. With her home washed away, she had nowhere to go. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs told her they didn’t have any programs for female veterans with children, she said.

Boothe beat cancer, and once back on her feet, was determined that no other female veterans would be left behind.

Money raised during this year’s pageant will pay for housing and prevention programs for female veterans, including financial assistance for utility bills and groceries. In four years, the Ms. Veteran America competition has helped Final Salute raise more than $1 million to combat homelessness among female veterans.