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6/12/2008
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NORTH SMITHFIELD - Ever since she was a little girl, the Miss America Pageant has been a family event in Francesca Simone's North Smithfield home. The small, tight-knit family would treat it like the Super Bowl, hosting a yearly party for the main event.
That little Italian girl who would once cuddle up with her grandmother Anna Mollicone to watch the pageant is now a grown woman, the new Miss Rhode Island, and will have the unique chance to give the nation's smallest state its highest placement ever on the national stage. The top finisher ever was in 1967 when Rhode Islander Marilyn Gail Cocozza of North Providence took third runner-up.
Dedication to the Alzheimer's cause and her devotion to improving her singing craft finally paid off for Simone, who says she honed her abilities and has now been rewarded as the representative from Rhode Island next January at the 2009 Miss America Pageant in Las Vegas, Nev., after winning the state title at the Stadium Theatre in Woonsocket on May 24. "My grandmother (Anna) was diagnosed with Alzheimer's when I was eight years old and suffered with it for 10 years before she died," said Simone, of the debilitating disease she witnessed first-hand in a family member she deeply loved.
As part of a whirlwind tour over the next year, Simone will continue to champion Alzheimer's awareness, as the founder of Families of Alzheimer's Carrying the Torch, or F.A.C.T., an organization providing help to families and caregivers of Alzheimer's patients.
"I will be remembered as a Miss Rhode Island who fought passionately for and advocated awareness and action against Alzheimer's disease," Simone wrote in her profile for the national Miss America Pageant. "I will be remembered as a Miss Rhode Island who had a lifelong dedication to her state and platform, working relentlessly for both. My wish is that through the title of Miss Rhode Island and my association with the Miss America organization, I will be someone, who, in some small way, made a difference in the lives of the suffering patients of Alzheimer's and their families."
As the Rhode Island representative at the Miss America Pageant, Simone said she is excited to participate this September in "Miss America: Reality Check," a returning reality television program on TLC highlighting the Miss America pageant.
"They haven't told us anything yet (about what we'll be doing)," said Simone. "All I know is you can't leave the house and you have Miss America supervision 24/7."
The daughter of Eugene and Debra Simone won the Miss Rhode Island Pageant in May on her third try after a first runner-up finish in 2006 and second runner-up in 2007, blowing judges away in a field of 10 with her rendition of "Nessun Dorma," from Giacomo Puccini's three-act opera "Turandot," popularized by Italian opera singer Luciano Pavarotti.
The singing standout, who this spring earned her master of music degree in vocal performance from the Boston Conservatory, said she believes three straight years in the Rhode Island pageant gave her a leg up on some of her competitors, alleviating the pressure she may have once felt in other pageants to answer questions like "Hillary or Barack?" with a patent answer.
"I didn't think they needed to know my opinion. (Voting) is supposed to be private," said Simone, of a portion of her answer to judges, an answer she thinks helped put her over the top. "I'm there to impress them, that's what really counts," she said, of not turning a judge off with an endorsement of one candidate over the other. "I thought they were both great candidates."
Simone, a lifetime North Smithfield resident who turns 23 today, June 12, graduated from St. Mary Academy Bay View in 2003, from Providence College in 2007, with a bachelor of arts degree in vocal performance, before earning her master of music degree this year.
She is a three-time gold medal-winner at the World Figure Skating Championships, sang for Pope John Paul II in Rome, has studied violin, oboe, English horn and piano, and worked in various local and regional charitable organizations.
The Miss America Pageant differs from the Miss USA pageant, said Simone, because of its dedication to community service, its requirement that you display a talent, and its emphasis on scholarship money, one of the key reasons why she became involved in the first place with the Miss America Pageant.
She said she has won thousands of scholarship dollars already, and the national stage will allow her the chance to win much more in her pursuit of a doctorate in the music field, in hopes of being a professor of music at a university.
