Scott Schulte

Sharlene hawkes - Former Miss America Working for Country’s Best

The smell is awful. There really isn’t anyway to describe it. Sweat, dirty clothes, even a little blood all mixed to give off one of the nastiest odors known to man. It’s the wrestling room at Viewmont High Schol and this is where Sharlene Hawkes has chosen to talk.

“That’s my son there,” Sharlene points out. “And that’s my husband, Bob.”

The Hawkes boys are part of the scene of organized chaos. Jacob is 10 and part of the Northside Wrestling Cllub along with 120 other aspiring grapplers. Bob, a former wrestler, is a parent-coach.

So, here is Miss America-1985, standing in the room full of young wrestlers, smiling and laughing as Bob and Jacob share in the father-son experience of athletics.

“Bob was a wrestler so he was thrilled when Jacob wanted to do this,” Sharlene says.

Jacob glances over and mom gives the thumbs up top her youngest child and only son. The Hawkes have three girls, Monica, 16, a volleyball at Viewmont, Nicole a XXX, and Sarah, who plays volleyball and as her momn says, “is quite the littler performer.”

A few people glance at Hawkes with that, “I think I know you” look.

Practice ends and sweaty Jacob gets a hug and smelly Bob still gets a kiss.

“This is great,” Hawkes says. “Jacob really wanted me to come watch and I just love it, especially that he and Bob can share this.”

The Hawkes leave and arrive home in time to help their daughters with homework, and call it a night. The next day the family arises early to do their “chores” while Bob fixes wheat mush, his specialty.

“A typical morning for us includes the kids getting up early and practicing piano or other similar things,” Hawkes says. “The kids remind me that they don’t get up at 6 a.m. to practice piano. I just tell them since we don’t have cows to milk, this is the substitute. It helps teach them a good work ethic.”

And, after all, the other kids don’t have a mother who saved the Miss America Pagaent’s reputation. Hawkes was crowned in 1984 and what could have been better for the pageant than a Mormon Sunday School teacher from Utah to follow on the heels of the scandalous year of Vanessa Williams and the Playboy scandal?

“Some people would say that I won Miss America because of the scandal and that was unfortunate,” Hawkes says. “Not because it really bothered me personally, but because when people said that or for the people who really believed that, it was to discount the other pageant contestants.”

And say what they want, but not many people can sit calmly at center stage and play the harp and sing in Spanish as Hawkes did for her talent performance.

“The Miss America experience was wonderful, but it was just a small part of my life,” Hawkes says. “I didn’t grow up with parents who brought me to beauty pageants. In fact, many of those kids never go on to Miss America.”

And being Miss America, while a definite door opener, was not something Hawkes flaunted. In fact, when she was hired as an ESPN sportscaster, the brass at the sports network were not privileged to that little piece of information.

“I didn’t even put that on my resume,” Hawkes says. “I wasn’t sure what they would think and I certainly didn’t want to be hired or not hired because of Miss America.”

Soon after starting her career with ESPN, the word slowly began to leak out so Hawkes set up a meeting with her supervisors.

“I was nervous,” she says. “I went in and said, ‘there’s something I didn’t tell you…’”

Hawkes proved to be a successful part of the growth of ESPN, as Miss America or not.

Hawkes spent much of her life as a tomboy outside the United States with her family. With Hawkes’ father being Robert Wells, the LDS general authority and many kids her age were going to junior high dances and proms, she was living in South America.

“I think growing up outside the United States was wonderful for me,” Hawkes says. “I really gained an appreciation for other cultures.”

For more on Sharlene Hawkes, visit:

http://www.sharlenehawkes.com/bio.html