Fairest of the Fair

Fairest of the Fair The Life and Times of an Arizona Girl Who Wears With Charm and Grace the Diadem of Miss America

The road to the throne of Miss America started with selling advertising in a school newspaper. At least Jacque Mercer found it so. A few months ago Jacque was an attractive young lady who live out Litchfield Park way with her parents. Chances are there weren't 100 people outside her family or social circle who knew she was alive. Then she was chosen Miss Phoenix, then Miss Arizona. The state looked over its collective shoulder and gave Jacque the eye, and discovered an eye full, indeed. "She is pretty, isn't she?" Then Arizona hurried on about its business while the Phoenix Junior Chamber of Commerce sent Jacque to Atlantic City. There she got more than a passing glance from the judges much more. She was voted the prettiest talented girl from coast to coast.

And she then became the toast of a nation that places great stock in both beauty and brains: Miss America of 1949. Surprised, Arizona rocked on its heels, recovered quickly enough to give the charming, 18-year-old brunette a rousing welcome home. And a closer look showed the wisdom of the judges' decision. But to get back to the Mercer method of winning beauty crowns: Jacque dropped into the Gene Botsford Studio in Phoenix for an ad for the North Phoenix High School Mustang. She caught the critical eye of Mary Botsford, who suggested that Jacque pose as a prospective clothes model. Jacque, naturally, was thrilled. It led to a job modeling teen-age and junior dresses for Alden's mail order catalogue of Chicago, a job in which she performed like a veteran.

Arizona's Jacque Mercer, Miss America of 1949.

Last spring, Harold Burdett of the Phoenix Junior Chamber of Commerce was running through a fist full of model photos, looking for candidates for the Miss Phoenix contest. Out of the sheaf he pulled one of Jacque and handed it to Tommy Thompson, another Jaycee with professional interests in beauty contestants. "There," said Burdett, "is the future Miss Arizona." Later, when the prediction was fulfilled, Burdett and Thompson made and won a $20 bet that Jacque would be selected Miss America.

There's more to winning than entering, of course, and that's where Jacque carried the ball. She attributes a large measure of her carrying ability to a perfect pass from an old schoolma'rm. Jacque's curves and pretty face, like little Topsy, just grew. But the poise, the skill, the polish with which she presented the potion scene from Romeo and Juliet at Atlantic City were products of long training and practice. And those qualities put as many stars in Jacque's crown as did her well-turned gams, softbrown eyes and naturally wavy short hair.

Credit for that Jacque gives unstintingly to Mrs. Virginia M. Duncan, dramatics director of North Phoenix High School.

No teacher's pet, Jacque got the Juliet spot in the high school play in competition with almost 300 other students. She found that acting, Duncan-style, is more than speaking lines. Jacque had to learn to live the part, to practice ballet steps and fencing, to take breathing exercises. Just before the Miss Phoenix and Miss Arizona contests, Mrs. Duncan coached her anew in the potion scene. And when the word flashed out of Atlantic City, the schoolma'rm telegraphed: "Jacque, moments like you are creating are a teacher's greatest joy."

Just who is this Jacque Mercer, besides being a girl with a pretty face and figure and a penchant for acting? Well, she comes of good, solid pioneer stock of the kind that wrote glorious chapters in Arizona's early history.

Justly, Jacque comes by her interest in dramatics. Papa Art Mercer was a character actor in class plays at the Arizona State College at Tempe. Mama Joy Mercer played small girl parts in plays all through high school and college. It was at Tempe college, incidentally, that Art and Joy met the opening day of school in 1927. Joy was registering as a freshman and Art, an upperclassman, gave her a hand. But he really was attracted by a purple hat with a red feather. "I liked her hat," Art recalls, "and I thought she was the cutest little thing I ever saw." They were married the following Fourth of July, at summer school in Flagstaff. Joy then was 15 years old, had completed a year of college. Art Mercer is nothing if not versatile. He's spent 21 years as a teacher or principal, currently is head bellringer of Phoenix' Riverside School on Lateral 17. He conducted a telephone company commercial survey of Phoenix in 1924, was a butcher and sports referee in Thatcher, wrote academic courses for the navy during World War II. He doubled in brass as construction foreman on the building of a 52-unit housing project at Buckeye. He reclaimed a section of desert land near Litchfield Park and is raising a prized registered seed field of experimental cotton. With the help of Jacque and Joy he took two surplus army barracks, placed them in an L shape, and as though by magic touch transformed them into nothing resembling ex-barracks. But from this the ranch derived its name, the X Bar X. Withal, Art found time as lieutenant governor of Kiwanis in Arizona to direct the largest division in the United States and Canada. And not to be outdone by Jacque and Joy, he won a trophy for organizing five new Kiwanis Clubs. Joy won her trophy, along with several other prizes, in a Tucson beautiful baby contest in 1914. And thereby set a record for Jacque to shoot at. Jacque missed, too, in 1931. She got the trophy as the healthiest baby girl in her class, but lost the beautiful baby title to another little doll. Joy was just twice as old as Jacque, for the only time in their lives, when Miss Arizona became Miss America. Joy can show you a photo of herself in the arms of Pancho Villa. It was taken in Bowie October 30, 1914, when Villa was a respectable Mexican politician, later to become a much-sought bandit leader. Joy taught school in Thatcher, Litchfield Park, Buckeye and Liberty, and the last two years at Avondale. Once, when Jacque was in the second grade, Joy was her teacher. “Just for a few months, though,” Joy recalled. “It was awfully hard on both of us.” Joy was under contract to teach again this year at Avondale, but she had to cancel it to chaperon Jacque on the continuous round of personal appearances scheduled by the Miss America Pageant Association. She is probably the travelingest mother in America today, for Jacque is always on the move. Jacquolyn (that's birth certificate spelling) Joy Mercer was born January 7, 1931, in her parents' rock house in Thatcher. She was delivered by big, jovial Dr. F. W. Butler, then and now of Safford, who accomplished something near the retort perfect when he telegraphed her parents on the occasion of her Atlantic City victory. “xxx you should hear me brag about how I saw her first.” For the record, Jacque was named after her mother, her great grandmother, her mother's doll, her father's uncle and her mother's half-uncle. She weighed six pounds and eight ounces, wasn't measured for height or is it length? More complete statistics were available 18 years later in Atlantic City: Just under five feet four, 106 pounds, 34inch bust and hips and 22-inch waist. Her baby book records that she stood alone at nine months and 26 days and walked 15 days later. She got her first hair cut in Mesa when she was three years and four months oldand still is getting it cut for other and better reasons. The baby book contains a lot of other trivia, but suffice it to say that she moved into the Salt River Valley at the age of 18 months. Without benefit of kindergarten, she took the Litchfield Park first grade in stride and then moved to Liberty School where Papa Mercer was principal. She was graduated as co-validictorian of her eighth-grade class. Meanwhile, in 4-H work, she was making her achievement in firstand second-year baking and sewing, in gardening and poultry-raising. Six years ago she got her picture in the Phoenix daily, The Arizona Republic, a little, chubbyfaced girl with a ribbon on top of her head and a bunch of radishes in her hand. Attached to the radishes was a blue ribbon won at 4-H fair in Tempe. She raised them herself. Jacque, by the way, can bake a cherry pie.

When Jacque wanted to enter North High, her father agreed with one condition: "Keep up those grades." So Jacque promised, and then moved in with long-time family friends, Dr. and Mrs. Edgar Pease. At North High, as a freshman in 1944, she posed for a yearbook photo with other members of a sub-deb society known as Hyphen. Next to Jacque stood another pretty girl, Donna McElroy. Donna was selected Miss Arizona in 1948, but didn't quite make the grade in Atlantic City. At North High, too, was born the love story of Jacque and Doug. It was puppy love, of course, but it has withstood the test of a long separation during which Jacque became America's Sweetheart. Doug is the 19-year-old son of Neil Cook, former Phoenix College professor, and Mrs. Cook. Currently, Doug is studying art at the University of Chicago. Sometime he may tell his grandchildren how he once was chased by Miss America. And he may add: "Your grandmother was Miss America back in 1949." Make no mistake about it, the affair is that serious. "Are you engaged?" Jacque was asked. "Not engaged." "When will you be married?" "That's not for publication." At Phoenix College last year, Doug and Jacque campaigned together for class offices. He was elected freshman president, she was named secretary.

The story of Jacque driving a tractor is no gag at all. The answer is Doug. He was attending art school in Los Angeles during the summer of '48 and there was a season of good drama there. The combination was, for Jacque, irresistible. No sentimentalist, Papa Mercer said she could go, but Jacque had to pay the freight. During the war she had part-time work in Dr. Pease' office as a dental assistant.

Not since the manpower shortage ended, however. No modeling job was handy. Papa Mercer pointed to the tractor. He was going to have to hire a tractor driver anyway. Jacque could have the job and the pay. So, swathed from head to toe in a futile effort to defeat the dust, Jacque plowed and disced 40 acres. She earned $34.50 the hard way, at 75 cents an hour, and made the trip. If the fouryear romance of their kids isn't enough, the Mercers and the Cooks have other common interests. Both are school teacher teams. If Jacque's hat size has been increased by her elevation to the throne of Miss America, she carefully concealed it from representatives of ARIZONA HIGHWAYS. She was, at once, the gracious queen fulfilling her public obligations and the bubbling school girl on a lark. If she attempted at all to dictate the trend of the story it was only a suggestion that this person or that person be credited with having had "so much to do with my winning." She was happiest when the occasion called for visits to Phoenix College, North High and the home of a sorority sister. And she was far more interested in being brought up to date on the doings of her school chums than she was in telling them of the adoration that has been hers.

Jacque's time for the next 10 months is not her own. Neither are the things she does necessarily of her own doing. These are dictated in a measure by the Miss America Pageant Association. She can't, for instance, pose for just any picture idea someone dreams up. If she failed to explain this adequately for good public relations it's because she is after all still just a kid. But a sweet, unspoiled kid about whom Arizonans may say proudly: "And remember, she's a native."