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08/06/2021
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By Alec Harvey June 8, 2021
Crowning glory: Ceil Jenkins Snow remembers being crowned Miss Alabama 50 years ago
Ceil Jenkins Snow with her daughter, Carrie Cearlock. (Photo courtesy of Ceil Jenkins Snow)
It has been 50 years since she was crowned Miss Alabama, but Ceil Jenkins Snow remembers it like it was yesterday – and other folks remind her of it, too.
“I promise you, there’s hardly a day that goes by that I don’t go somewhere and they say, ‘This is Ceil Snow. By the way, she was Miss Alabama,’” Snow recalls.
And though she’s gone on to a distinguished acting career, retired in May from a 23-year career at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and is the grandmother of four, that’s just fine with her.
Ceil Jenkins Snow says she went into the Miss Alabama Pageant to have fun, not to win. (Photo courtesy Miss Alabama Pageant)
“I feel very honored to have been Miss Alabama,” she says. “I feel very touched. I feel like it means I did a good job as an ambassador for this state that means so much to me.”
This year’s Miss Alabama Pageant takes place Thursday through Saturday at the Alabama Theatre. On Saturday night, Tiara Pennington’s successor will be crowned. Because of COVID-19, Pennington was the first young woman to hold the crown for two years.
Snow’s pageant career, too, had some firsts (and lasts) involved with it, and it’s kind of surprising it happened at all.
“I was Miss Teenage Birmingham, but I really wasn’t a pageant girl,” recalls Snow, who grew up in Mountain Brook. “I didn’t know what I was doing at all.”
Her first year in the Miss Alabama Pageant, Snow showed up with hundreds of other young women at the barracks at the Alabama State Fairgrounds.
“It was a gigantic cattle call,” she recalls. “There were no preliminaries. We showed up at the barracks and competed, then we sat by our telephones – there were no voice messages, no text messages. You waited for that phone call that would let you know you were in the top 50, and then they narrowed it down from there.”
Much to Snow’s surprise, she finished as second runner-up. The next year, while a student at Jacksonville State University, her sorority, Phi Mu, asked her to represent them in the Miss Northeast Alabama Pageant. It was the first year Miss Alabama used preliminary pageants, and Snow won the preliminary to advance to the Miss Alabama Pageant at Birmingham-Southern College.
“I won the preliminary, and I said, ‘OK, the next one is the big one,’” Snow says. “I’ll never forget a guy saying at the time, ‘No, this was the big one. If you hadn’t won this one, you wouldn’t be going to Miss Alabama.’”
That year was the final year that the Miss Alabama Pageant was televised, and when Snow was announced as Miss Alabama 1971, it didn’t compute, and she just remained seated.
“They had to send (former Miss Alabama) Ann Fowler out on the stage and take me by the hand and stand me up and say, ‘You just won Miss Alabama,’” Snow recalls. “That’s what happened. I was just having fun. That’s probably why I won.”
Ceil Jenkins Snow says she went into the Miss Alabama Pageant to have fun, not to win. (Photo courtesy Miss Alabama Pageant)
So Snow took her singing and dancing talent to Atlantic City, and though she didn’t make the top 10, a piece of her won the Miss America crown.
Miss Ohio Laurel Lea Schaefer was in the top 10, and as she prepared to compete in the swimsuit competition, the heel broke off one of her peach-colored swimsuit shoes.
“My swimsuit shoe happened to be the same color, and she wore my shoe,” Snow says. Schaefer went on to be crowned Miss America.
Snow has the fondest of memories of her time as Miss Alabama, always attends the state pageant and often speaks to contestants about what to expect.
“Miss Alabama provided me with the opportunity to go to college,” she says. “In 1971, you didn’t have scholarships awarded to young women in college for sports. This is what you had the opportunity to do if it wasn’t academic. I’ll always be grateful. Miss Alabama is the reason I was able to finish college.”
Snow earned a degree in education from JSU and a master’s from UAB.
“My first career was teaching,” she says. “I taught in Vestavia.”
After giving birth to her daughter, Carrie, she began performing on stage, often with Summerfest. She starred in “The Music Man” with Jim Nabors, “My Fair Lady” with Edward Mulhare, “Follies” with Lee Meriwether and a number of other former Miss Americas, and “Me and My Gal” with the late Rebecca Luker.
After that, though, she found her “real career,” spending 23 years at UAB as director of local government. After retiring May 1, she’s able to devote more time to what she calls the greatest thing she’s ever done, being Carrie’s mother and “Grancie” to her four grandchildren.
Ceil Jenkins Snow (top, fourth from left) returns each year to the Miss Alabama Pageant. (Photo courtesy Ceil Jenkins Snow)
Her cadre of former Miss Alabama friends came up with her nickname when Carrie was pregnant.
“I was so excited to tell them, and they said, ‘We’ve got to come up with a name for her,’” Snow says. “They came up with Grand C, for Ceil, and what it ended up being is Grancie.”
Snow’s Miss Alabama crown sits under an antique globe on a bookshelf in her den in Vestavia Hills, a reminder of a time she’s very proud of.
“If you remember 50 years later that I was Miss Alabama, hopefully I did a good job,” she says.
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