A candidate with only one arm has crown Miss Iowa 2013. Nicole Kelly, who was born without her left forearm, will compete in Miss America 2013 in September where she plans to advocate for people with disabilities. Nicole Kelly is currently studying directing and theater management at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. She hopes to work on Broadway as a stage manager.
“As I grew up I learned to counterbalance the initial stares I received from people with an outgoing personality that would not give into ‘no,’” Kelly wrote on the Miss Iowa website. “This means that I tried everything. From baseball, to dance, to diving — there’s nothing I would not try. I found my passion within a world where I was giving people permission to stare: the stage.”
The beauty from Hawkeye State town of Keokuk says she is as much surprised of her win as anyone else. ‘If you would have told me a year ago that “pageant queen” was in my future I would have laughed. So maybe I didn’t see this path coming my direction, but now that I am here I can see it is a perfect fit and I feel so blessed to have been surrounded by people who have encouraged my steps,’ Kelly wrote on the pageant website.
If she wins Miss America in September, she will be the second winner with a disability. In 1994, Heather Whitestone of Alabama became the first deaf woman to win the title of Miss America.
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