It's good to be the queen

For the belles of North Carolina's Azalea Festival, there's nothing like learning to graciously accept appreciative gawking.

By Daniel Kraus

May 12, 2000 | They begin appearing at 7:30 in the morning, clutching Egg McMuffins and steaming Hardee's mugs. Wearing windbreakers and scarves, and mostly bald or white-haired, they sit down on the cement steps facing the empty riverside stage. They're usually up at this hour anyway.

They have come to witness the Azalea Festival, which, fueled by a budget of $900,000 and more than 1,000 volunteers, is the biggest annual event in Wilmington, N.C. (population 60,000). More specifically, they have come to see the arrival and crowning of the 53rd Azalea Queen.

For 48 years, a woman known only as Funny Face has jockeyed for the best spot on the Cape Fear riverside, one that will give her ample room to blow a kiss to the Azalea Queen as she promenades toward the coronation stage. Funny Face has been here since dawn, her breakfast in a plastic bag and her folding chair bungee-corded to her back.

Ben and Mary Glisson are also here. They attended the first Azalea Festival back in 1948, when Hollywood starlet Jacqueline White was crowned the first queen and TV's "Queen for a Day" offered a trip to the Azalea Festival as a grand prize, and they have attended all 52 since.

"We used to get up even earlier than this and go down to the circus to watch the elephants pull up the tents. But the [elephants] don't do it no more." Ben Glisson smiles and squints his wrinkled eyes. "They got too old."

With the raspy swish of taffeta on pavement, the Azalea belles begin arriving -- 96 local high school girls strapped and tucked into girdles, petticoats, sun hats and hoop dresses. They wear fingerless lace gloves and hold frilly silk parasols. Their hair -- curled, woven and cunningly barretted -- is so labored and extravagant you feel shamed by its lustrous proximity.

"What an experience for these young ladies," raves one onlooker. The highly coveted opportunity to be a belle is largely one of learning how to gracefully accept appreciative gawking. Like their floral namesake, the Azalea belles are strategically planted around town to add an elegant, silent backdrop to every festival event.

Today, a local television crew asks one of them what's happening, exactly. She responds, "We're just sitting around, smiling."

In 1998, during the crowning of Queen Alla Korot (from ABC's "All My Children"), the unspoken strangeness of the Azalea belles became suddenly -- and painfully -- clear. The day was hot and the stone-still, cardiovascularly constricted Azalea belles began turning green and staggering like drunken sailors.

"Then they just started droppin' one at a time, droppin' like flies, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom," recalls queen coordinator Sam Garner. "I remember seeing three or four go down." They hit the cobblestone in a swirl of garters, bloomers and pretty pink flowers; it was like a scene from a David Lynch film, minus the dancing dwarf.

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"I've lived in Wilmington since I was a little girl," says 16-year-old belle Emily Sloan. "And every year I would come down to the festival and I'd see the belles, and it was like my dream to be one. They were so pretty and they looked like princesses -- and every little girl wants to be a little princess."

Fellow belle Candice Paige, 16, goes one better: "I'd love to be queen," she says. So would dozens of other girls, for as many reasons:

"They give away $32 million of scholarship money every year, and I'm very grateful for the help with tuition." -- Miss North Carolina, Kelly Trogdon, 24.

"Because Miss East Coast represents the CUE Foundation, which works with missing children, and I'm a big fan of kids." -- Miss East Coast, Cheree Justus, 20.

"So I can represent my county and show girls that they're beautiful inside and out." -- Teen Miss Brunswick County, Amanda Dew, who will achieve this goal by clog dancing to a "Grease" remix.

Teen Miss Valentine Sweetheart 2000-2001, Tiffany Danielle Smith, 16, was late for her performance and now slumps on the lawn in a pretty pink dress, dejected.

"Ever since I was a little kid, I always saw girls walking around with crowns on, and I always wanted a crown," she says. "But now that I got the crown, I like the title, because it seems to make me feel like I'm somebody, and that I'm here and nobody can mistake me for anybody else."

At the street fair, dozens and dozens of crown-topped young women crowd the Cape Fear Stage, a small, tarp-covered proscenium featuring performances by the likes of Little Miss Yam Festival, Teen Miss Tobacco Festival and Wee Miss Dublin Peanut Festival. Everywhere you look are sparkled tutus, spangled leotards, lips, hair, teeth and crowns. The hardest thing about the pageant is telling the princesses apart from one another.

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