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26/07/2019
Kathryn Stamm, Evansville Courier & Press Published 5:09 p.m. CT July 26, 2019
EVANSVILLE, Ind. — This time last year, Hillary May had just moved to Newark, Delaware, to start her PhD program. Now, she wears the Miss Delaware crown and is competing for Miss America.
And until 2019, it hadn't even crossed her mind that she could be in the running for Miss America. Her first competition on the journey there was for Miss Hockessin in January.
The Miss Delaware Scholarship Organization is the official state preliminary for the Miss America Competition. Miss America is a non-profit organization focused on scholarship and service, and competitors are judged based off interviews and talent performances.
The 97-year-old organization recently revamped to eliminate the swimsuit portion and showcase the candidates' voices more often.
The Miss America competition has evolved since it started in Atlantic City nearly a century ago. Austin Bogues, @AustinBogues
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May, 23, had never lived anywhere outside Indiana before graduate school. She grew who in Mount Vernon, Indiana, where she graduated from Mount Vernon Senior High School. She then went to Butler University, where she majored in psychology with minors in philosophy, neuroscience and chemistry.
She had only really competed at the local level, for Miss Posey County at the 4-H fair, which she did win.
So May didn't expect much when her roommate at the University of Delaware convinced her to compete. She had been helping her roommate prepare for the Miss USA competition, when she floated the idea.
"Pageants, historically, are really expensive," May said. "I was like, 'I'm a PhD student, I can't afford anything!"
Luckily, May and her roommate are similar sizes, and she offered for her to wear her gowns and to help her through it.
"So I did a local (competition), not at all expecting to win," May said. "But I was totally fresh, and it was 100 percent new. I hadn't been overthinking anything or trying to be a specific way."
This confidence helped May, she said. She was comfortable on stage, having been in theater and dance through grade school. Plus, she had nothing to lose.
"If you're going in with the mentality that this is going to be a lot of fun, that I'm going to make a lot of friends and I'm going to come out on the other side a better person, then even if you don't come home with the crown, you've won," May said.
Hillary May won the Miss Delaware 2019 pageant at Cape Henlopen High School near Lewes on June 15, 2019. (Photo: CHUCK SNYDER/SPECIAL TO THE NEWS JOURNAL)
In addition to returning to the stage, May said the pageants she's been in helped prepared her for college and internships.
"I answered a lot of the same questions (in pageants) I answered in my first job interviews," she said. "(Participating in pageants) gives me the interview skills, it gives me the onstage presence to be a successful woman in this world."
Her research in her education PhD program focuses on childhood development, especially looking at how play factors in. Her specialization is in learning sciences, drawing on her undergraduate studies.
She chose the University of Delaware, in part, to work with Dr. Roberta Golinkoff. May especially likes Golinkoff's philosophy that research is pointless unless it benefits people as well as Golinkoff's work to extend the impact of her research.
In the future, May would love to apply her research to children's media and programming development at a broadcasting network, such as PBS.
May is busy enough with her graduate studies and research, but she also finds time to volunteer. She works with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and Supporting Kidds, a local Delaware organization. In that program, she is a grief facilitator for children ages 5 through 16 who have lost a parent or a sibling.
This work involving mental health and advocacy started in high school, when one of her best friends lost his father to suicide. She worked with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention through her college years at Butler.
It was only natural for mental health awareness to be at the forefront of her pageant competitions, too. Her platform is "Let's Talk: Breaking the Stigma Around Mental Health."
"With my platform as Miss Delaware, I am hoping to focus a lot on this education piece," May said. "It's the norm everywhere that mental health just isn't talked about... If we can get on the preventative side and get education early, then it'll help us recognize these things earlier, deal with these things earlier."
May's schedule has only gotten busier since winning Miss Delaware in June. With the title, she gives speeches and makes appearances at events throughout the year, but she's having lots of fun doing it.
The Mount Vernon native will take the stage to compete for Miss America 2020 on Dec. 19, which will air on NBC.
Miss Delaware contestants rush Hilary May after she was crowned Miss Delaware 2019 on Saturday, June 15, 2019. (Photo: CHUCK SNYDER/SPECIAL TO THE NEWS JOURNAL)
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