Success Story: Heather Whitestone
Heather Whitestone lost her hearing at the young age of 18 months, what she never lost, however, was her ambition. Despite her setback, Whitestone reached levels of achievement almost every little girl at some point dreams of, becoming the first deaf woman to be crowned Miss America at the 1995 competition. Of course, such success didn’t come easy for Whitestone, though growing up in the small city of Dothan, Alabama, until the age of 7, she quickly found a historical role model to look up to in the form of another influential deaf Alabaman, Helen Keller.While Whitestone was a smart young lady, her disability inhibited her ability to keep up with her classmates, despite her ability to speak and read lips. At her request, Whitestone transferred to the Central Institute for the Deaf at the age of 11, where her course load was accelerated to catch up to peers in her grade level. She later returned to Alabama for high school, where she graduated Berry High school in Birmingham (now known as Hoover High) with a 3.6 Grade Point Average. After graduation, Whitestone attended Jacksonville State University. While at the university, she was crowned Miss JSU, continuing on in her pageant career to then be first runner up in the 1992 Miss Alabama pageant. Whitestone competed in 62 total pageants, with the 1994 Miss Alabama Pageant and 1995 Miss America Pageant serving as the obvious highlights, crowned the winner of both.Since claiming the highest honor pageantry has to offer, Whitestone went back to Jacksonville State to complete her education, then put her fame to good use, championing causes particularly important to her as a deaf American. Whitestone has served on the board for the Helen Keller Foundation for Research and Education, served on the Advisory Council for the National Institute of Health on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, in addition to a number of public service campaigns and spokesperson roles. She has also become quite politically active since her crowning, speaking at the Republican National Conventions in 1996 and 2000.