Miss Universe 1967 dies at 69

By Madison Fantozzi / News Chief

Posted Aug 27, 2015 at 11:11 PM

It wasn’t her big brown eyes or long brown tresses that won Sylvia Hitchcock Carson her Miss Universe 1967 title. Sure, she was beautiful.

LAKE WALES — It wasn’t her big brown eyes or long brown tresses that won Sylvia Hitchcock Carson her Miss Universe 1967 title.

Sure, she was beautiful.

“She had this walk that was so wonderful — like a dream,” friend Mary Jane Nageon de Lestang said, “but it was her generous spirit that won it all.”

That’s the consensus among friends and family who remember Carson — the farm girl turned pageant queen by accident.

Carson died Aug. 16 of lung cancer that spread to her bones. She was 69.

“Just four months ago she was outside landscaping my yard at my new house,” her oldest son, Jonathan Carson, said. “She was always there to lend a hand.”

Carson said his mother’s selflessness and generosity were her biggest traits.

“She could’ve done whatever she wanted and she chose to become a housewife, a mother, a community volunteer,” he said. “She was a giver, 100 percent.”

She was involved with the Imperial Symphony Guild of Lake Wales, Daughters of the American Revolution, American Heart Association, American Cancer Society and YMCA.

She liked to travel, paint and garden.

“She was always very active,” Jonathan Carson said. “If she saw some weeds in someone’s yard, she’d start pulling them.”

“My dad joked that there’s going to be a lot more weeds in the world now without her,” he said.

Born on Jan. 31, 1946, Sylvia Hitchcock Carson grew up on a farm in Miami, where she studied art at Miami Dade Junior College. She continued her studies at the University of Alabama, where her Chi Omega sorority sisters talked her into competing in the Miss Alabama pageant. She had a tennis match that day, Nageon de Lestang said, but would do anything for the people she cared about.

She subsequently became Miss USA and Miss Universe in just one year.

When her reign ended, she had a short modeling stint in New York before returning to Miami. There she met her husband, William Carson, an inventor best known for a fruit harvesting machine. They moved to Lake Wales in the 1980s and had three children and seven grandchildren.

“She’s just ‘mom’ to me,” Jonathan Carson said. “She did everything for us kids — took us everywhere she could, gave us experiences we will never forget.”

He recalled accompanying his mother to a Miss Teen pageant in Miami when he was 15. She led his Cub Scouts group and went to every sports game. They went rock mining, fishing, skiing and snowmobiling.

“We did a little bit of everything,” he said. “All the family time is the greatest memory to me.”

Nageon de Lestang shares similar memories. The friend of 42 years met Carson through their husbands, who regularly went scuba diving together.

The couples traveled the country and the women called themselves Thelma and Louise.

“I was her sidekick,” Nageon de Lestang said. “I was always there to help her with her charity work, but she was the real driving force in this community.”

And Carson was always there for her best friend.

Nageon de Lestang has six children — five boys and a girl, who’s the youngest.

“By the sixth kid, no one is excited for you anymore,” Nageon de Lestang said, “but when it turned out to be a girl after having five boys, that was something to be excited about.”

Her best friend threw her a surprise baby shower and “the whole town must have been there. I don’t know how they hid all the cars.”

She said that’s just one example of Carson’s generosity and thoughtfulness.

“She was always doing something for someone,” she said. “She loved to shop, too – maybe too much – but she always had something for somebody.”

“She was certainly beautiful, especially on the inside.”

https://www.theledger.com/article/LK/20150827/News/608082668/LL/