#VintageKSDK: The night Miss Missouri, Debbye Turner, was crowned Miss America

Click the link for the full story: www.ksdk.com/article/features/vintageksdk-the-nigh… ST. LOUIS — When she was crowned Miss America, she lived out the dreams of millions of girls. But Debbye Turner also captured hearts all across the bi-state the night she won the title in 1989. Let's go to the video vault for that moment 31 years ago, when a veterinary student at Mizzou became the first and only Miss Missouri to ever be crowned Miss America. Sept. 16, 1989. Miss Missouri, Debbye Turner, a talented singer and pianist who played "Flight of the Bumblebee" on the marimba, won the 63rd annual Miss America pageant. "I remember every inch of it,” says Dr. Debbye Turner Bell, 31 years later. Turner Bell, who describes herself as a little country girl originally from Arkansas, says it was a profound moment of affirmation and validation. "I did not feel like the most beautiful girl in the world, nothing like that,” she said. “But I felt seen." After a two-hour competition in Atlantic City, New Jersey nothing would ever be the same. "It truly changed the trajectory of my life," she said. "Having been raised in a lower middle-class single parent home with high standards, my mother expected a lot from me and my sister. But I never dreamed that I would have had the experiences that becoming Miss America would afford me in the years to come,” says Debbye. Debbye Turner would spend the next year traveling the country as Miss America 1990, using her reign to motivate and inspire young people. In 1991, she finished her final year of veterinary school, and six years after winning the crown, she'd win our hearts when she jumped into our living rooms. Dr. Debbye Turner began her broadcast journalism career as host of Show-Me St. Louis alongside John Pertzborn. "I was conflicted,” recalls Debbye, “because at that point I was still a fairly new graduate of veterinary school and I wasn't practicing veterinary medicine, and I felt guilty about that. So, I talked to a veterinarian who is a mentor of mine, and he said, ‘Debbie, you can do more good for animals and animal welfare on TV, talking to thousands or millions of people, than you can spaying one dog at a time.’ And that was the permission I needed."

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