Thursday, July 13, 2000 Older Editions

Will an Andover miss soon be Miss America?

By Neil Fater

When millions of people tune in to see the next Miss America Oct. 14, they may see a young Andover woman walking down the runway, waving back at them.

Jennifer Powers, 20, an Andover High grad now attending Northwestern University, already has been crowned Miss Illinois. This fall, she'll be one of the 51 contestants vying for the country's most coveted crown, Miss America.

There she is -- Competing in her first pageant ever, Andover native Jennifer Powers already has been named Miss Illinois. Known for her singing talent, the Northwestern University student will try to become the next Miss America in October.

But, unlike many of the other women in the pageant who have competed in dozens of competitions before, Powers has a very restricted runway resume.

This year's Miss America pageant is the first pageant she has ever entered. The former Lavender Hill Lane resident even used her old Andover High prom dress and borrowed an outfit or two for the local pageant she needed to win to qualify for the state round.

So what was she thinking when she won the state pageant and Miss Illinois, Jade Smalls, began putting the state crown on her head?

"I guess my first thought was, 'Oh, my God. I have so much work to do,'" she says. "'My whole life is going to change.'"

Powers says she had never considered competing in a pageant until Kate Shindle, Miss America 1998, called her and suggested she try for the honor. Shindle is a recent Northwestern grad who had performed with Powers in a college musical-theater production. Obviously, she was impressed.

Yet, even after talking with the former Miss America, Powers says she was not interested.

"My first thought was, 'No.' I never thought of myself as fitting that mold," she says. "But it's a scholarship pageant. It's not a beauty pageant. I didn't understand that."

A voice major, Powers also was busy focusing on earning a 4.0 grade point average, and preparing six classical pieces to perform for the voice faculty, which can tell sophomores to consider changing majors.

So Shindle and Kelli Lotrich, the executive director of the local scholarship pageant that Powers ultimately entered, kept calling. Finally, just two weeks before the qualifying Miss Northern Illinois pageant, Powers decided to give it a try.

She called her mom, Maryellen, asked her to fly to Illinois. The two went shopping for a bathing suit at a local mall. Though Powers borrowed a dress from a sorority sister to wear during the talent competition and had little time to research additional information on her "platform" -- the issue she would promote if selected -- Powers wowed the judges, particularly in the talent competition. Powers experience in musical theater paid big dividends.

"She walks on the stage and she becomes the focus," says Lotrich. "I don't know if it's the good karma or what. I think she's amazing on stage. Everyone else could fall down, and you'd watch Jenny."

Still, going into the states, many people had to consider Powers a long shot.

"There were a lot of veterans there, and a lot of girls who have been to states. One of them said they had been there six times," she says.

But there were those who believed the rest of the competition would feel the power of Powers' musical talent. For the states, she decided to perform opera publicly for the first time.

"Just from what they were telling us out there, because her talent was so strong, they felt she would place at least in the top five," says Jennifer's dad, David Powers. "After that, anything can happen from there."

However, Powers had little time to prepare for the states.

"I was at a disadvantage. I got out of school just two weeks before the pageant. It was really, really crazy for me," she says. "I finished my last final and I opened this huge book, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences.

"People are asking, 'What are you reading that for, Jenny? Is that for another course?'"

In a sense, it was. Powers was taking a crash course in how to prepare to be Miss America.

So she studied what she could about her platform -- the multifaceted importance of the arts in education. She spoke with political leaders, participated in conferences, even teamed up with VH1's Save the Music for an instrument drive.

"Going into the pageant I had this attitude, 'I've done the best I can, given the time frame.' I went in thinking 'Yes, I am raw. I am a newbie, but I have a lot to offer the program.' I was hoping they'd see my potential," she says.

Obviously, the judges did. Powers won the overall talent competition, and, ultimately, the Miss Illinois title. "It is such a physical, emotional, spiritual challenge," says Powers. "You just really have to know who you are, and what you stand for. You have to have a belief system. It's imperative. I don't think a lot of girls I competed with did.

"For me, I was doing it for ($50,000) scholarship money, and it's an avenue where I can continue to be an advocate for my passion," she says. "One of my goals is to change the public's perception of what opera is. That it can be fun. It is entertaining."

Question quandary

While the talent competition was clearly one of Powers' strengths, she says the most difficult part of the pageant for her is answering on-stage questions.

"At the Miss America pageant, I'll continue to stress about that the most," she laughs.

"I've grown up performing, and not speaking publicly," she says. "I've always been successful portraying a character and saying someone else's words. This is the first time I've had to be a communicator and just be Jenny Powers."

Before the finals, when contestants face another round of questions, Powers was concerned about what might happen.

"I thought that I would blank, or not be able to articulate my thoughts," she says. "But what was so calming was there was a child on stage who was more petrified than I was."

The pageant organizers had decided to have children ask the finalists one question of their own. Powers may have drawn the short straw here, but apparently made the most of it.

"One girl was asked, 'Do you have a boyfriend?' My question was 'If you woke up in the morning and you were a boy, what would you do?'" says Powers. "After a lot of thought I said, 'I guess I'd look for a pretty girl like me or you,' and I pointed to the little girl on stage. What do you say to that?"

"The look on Jenny's face was priceless," says Lotrich. "She had fun working the crowd, too, because they enjoyed that the little girl had asked that question."

While others appeared to have more prepared statements about their platform, Powers believes she excelled because she came across as more genuine.

"I was really speaking from my heart. It might not have been as clearly stated, but I think people listened more because it was straight from the heart," she says.

"That's completely what did it for her," says Lotrich, "and her talent's phenomenal, which doesn't hurt."