Life goes beyond the tiara

The last thing Sharlene Wells Hawkes wants is someone to refer to her as a former Miss America. She has spent 20 years trying to move past it — past the image, the jokes, the cartoons, the cliches. Hasn't she outgrown it by now, anyway? Then again, if she hadn't been Miss America, we probably wouldn't be talking about her, would we? So let's get this out of the way.

The tiara is in a closet. The trophy is hidden on a corner shelf in her husband Bob's office. The gown is in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints museum (you have to have an appointment to see it — it's in a box, inside a drawer, in archives.) She has three trunks of Miss America memorabilia in the basement somewhere, one of them devoted entirely to "keys of the city" she collected from her travels, which have since been confiscated by her children.

There is a large photograph of her as Miss America in the living room — Bob's idea, she says. Before the Hawkeses hosted a party, she removed the photo from the wall and hid it. Bob searched the house and found it. When the guests arrived, she looked up and — hey, how did that get back there?

Wind through the back roads of Centerville, past pastures and horse corrals, and there she is, Miss America, 1985. She shares a large two-story house on five acres with Bob — a physical therapist in private practice — and their four children, Monica, 13; Nicole, 10; Sarah, 8; and Jacob, 6.

It took the kids a while to realize that Mom was Miss America and what that meant. Years ago, Monica climbed in the car after school one day and stared at her mom for a few moments before finally asking, "Were you really Miss America?" Kids at school had asked her about it that day.

Hawkes greets a morning visitor wearing sweats and no makeup, looking a little sleepy, with her hair pulled back in a disheveled ponytail. She turned 40 this week. She moans about wrinkles, and there are a few of those, but her face has actually become more handsome with age — leaner, more angular, the jaw a little squarer, highlighted by pale blue-green eyes and a smile straight out of a milk ad.

She never got the slight bump on her nose fixed, as some suggested. She became self-conscious about it when insensitive reporters asked her if she planned to get it repaired after winning the crown. No one else would have noticed it. She learned to hide it in photographs years ago by turning her head down and slightly to the right. To wit: the photos on this page.