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News for America's Junior Miss System

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AJM finals on webcast

WPMI has dedicated a portion of their website to help promote the webcast of 51st AJM National Finals. With state pages, blogs, photo albums and more, the AJM Community Page will be your inside look at the Class of 2008 prior to and during the national finals. Check it out at www.nbc15online.com and look for the America's Junior Miss link on the bottom left of the page.

Be sure to let your family and friends know to return to the AJM Community Page on WPMI's website on Saturday, June 28 at 7 p.m. central to watch the 51st AJM National Finals LIVE!

New Choreographer/Director for Junior Miss

Submitted by: DAN MURTAUGH/The PressRegister.com

America's Junior Miss completed its offseason transformation last week, hiring a California-based choreographer to direct the scholarship competition's national finals in June.

Georgio Fagan, who had directed and choreographed the show for the past six years, was not invited back after he was arrested last year in Florida on charges of unlawful sexual activity with a minor. The charges were unrelated to his work with Junior Miss.

The new director, Gia Solari, has choreographed shows for the American Music Theater, Woodminster Amphitheater and the San Francisco Musical Theater Co.

She also has judged the National Dance Team Championships, is a former faculty member and choreographer for the Universal Dance Association, and was the artistic director/choreographer for the hip-hop band Townsend.

"Gia stood out because her creative style and experience seemed to fit the position," Junior Miss spokeswoman Cassidy Grimes said in an e-mail.

"She has experience working with all levels of dancers, including those who may have little or no prior experience with dancing," Grimes said. "That was very important, given that some of the Junior Misses may not have prior dance experience before coming to nationals."

While Solari will coordinate the entire show, Junior Miss hired Jazzercise Executive Vice President Shanna Nelson to choreograph the contestants' fitness routine for the competition, which will be held June 26-28.

Both choreographing positions used to be manned by Fagan.

AJM is back on track for 2007, say officials

America's Junior Miss is planning a homecoming for 2007 to celebrate its 50th year in Mobile, officials said, noting that the national scholarship program is back on track after pushing through turbulent and uncertain times.

The format for 2007 will be a similar to the 2006 program, but with special events and programs added to commemorate the golden anniversary of the program, AJM spokeswoman Mary Lee McCrory said. "It's going well; we're very excited," McCrory said. "They have some different things in the works. ... We don't want to give away the surprise."

Vance Chunn, the chairman of the 50th anniversary committee, said one of the main things the committee is working on is to get as many past and present AJM participants, volunteers and sponsors back in Mobile for the June competition. "We're trying to contact all the past junior misses from a national standpoint as well as other state and local junior misses who are interested in coming back to Mobile," Chunn said. "We're contacting past host families, past sponsors who are still involved with the program and trying to really bring as many people back together who have been involved in Junior Miss as we can."

Chunn said there will be some "new neat and exciting aspects to (the program) that we think really will be extraordinary." Because the committee is "still in the early stages of planning," Chunn said that he could not comment on what those exact plans will be.

Last year, after declaring in May that the AJM program was over for good -- in part due to a lack of national sponsors -- pageant board members announced in August that the national finals would indeed continue in Mobile, only without being televised nationally.

The program has about half its funding in place for the 2007 finals through its States Club, a group of private donors and businesses that give $5,000 each. The donors, who sponsor a specific state through the program, raised $250,000 for the 2006 production. McCrory said the program fully expects to have all of this year's States Club money pledged in the coming weeks, again bringing the total to $250,000.

"We're working on some other sponsors, too," McCrory said. The program does not have any national sponsors as yet, McCrory said, "But there's always the hope."

The show again will not be televised this year. Without the national television commitment in 2006, organizers were able to cut expenses in half from $1.2 million to around $600,000, pageant officials said.

Florida Pageant Scheduled

The city of Perry will host the Florida Junior Miss pageant for the next five years. This year's pageant finals will be March 4 at the Taylor County High School. Miss Florida 2005, Mari Wilensky of Jacksonville, a semi-finalist in the recent Miss America pageant, will be the mistress of ceremonies. The Florida Junior Miss winner receives college scholarship money and represents Florida in the national Junior Miss pageant in June in Mobile, Ala. Mobile, which has hosted the national program since 1957, had announced the end of the Junior Miss program last May. But a national outcry and new sponsorships resurrected the program in August.

Reprieve for Junior Miss Pageant

August 10, 2005 — A 48-year-old Mobile tradition will live to see a 49th year in the city. Three months after declaring that the America's Junior Miss program in June would be the last one ever, AJM board mem bers announced Tuesday that the program will indeed continue in Mobile, only without being nationally televised. The AJM board had said in May that the pageant would end after the June 25 national finals show, blaming a lack of na tional sponsors and the inability to attract a major television network. "TV has been an issue for us," said Eric Patterson, president of the AJM board of directors. "At one time, we thought the national exposure would be good for us." Patterson said the AJM board members hoped local television broadcasts for the program would continue, even though they will not be courting national television. And AJM officials said Tuesday that although the 2006 budget would be slashed in half -- from $1.2 million to $600,000 -- the program does not have full funding yet. "We must attract additional financial support of people in the Mobile community and around the country to be successful," Patterson said. "The city of Mobile and Mobile County have historically been a part of our support in maintaining the AJM office here, and we are excited they are continuing that support." This year, the Mobile County Commission pledged an additional $75,000 to the program in February, increasing its total contribution to the 2005 pageant to $176,950. The city of Mobile contributed $208,000, which meant more than 30 percent of the 2005 budget was shouldered by the city and county. The pledged 2006 contributions from the city and county are significantly less, though still will equal 30 percent of the proposed $600,000 budget. "The city has agreed to put $100,000 into Junior Miss," Mayor Mike Dow said Tuesday. Dow said there was also an equal amount of private sector donations pledged to the program. "I think it's fantastic," he said. "It's a part of Mobile, and shame on us if we let it get away." County Commission spokeswoman Barbara Drummond said the County Commission will continue its annual appropriation of $100,000 to the AJM program next year. "The commission sees it as a value to our community," Drummond said. "There's no new money; we're just continuing what we've done for years." Patterson also announced that if the Mobile community can raise $200,000, The Mitchell Company will make a $100,000 donation. "We think this challenge grant is the thing that will push us over the edge," Patterson said. "We're just trying to do what we can to keep Junior Miss in Mobile," said John Saint, president and CEO of The Mitchell Company. Saint said the matching donation was a one-time commitment for the 2006 program, though that did not mean the company would not contribute in the future. "Let's see what happens in 2006 and go from there," he said. Speculation that the defunct program might continue in Chattanooga, Tenn., began on the week of the national finals, and a grassroots campaign to save the program, possibly by moving it to Chattanooga, began in late June. A group of regional Junior Miss officials, dubbed Friends of AJM, launched a Web site and fund-raising campaign aimed at continuing the program either in Mobile or Chattanooga for at least the next three years. The group presented its plan to save the program, without television, to the AJM board at a special meeting July 26, and both Friends members and AJM officials were optimistic that a compromise could be reached. "My hopes are much higher today than they were two weeks ago," Patterson said at that meeting. Mike Steele, Friends co-founder and regional Junior Miss coordinator for Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, said he was "thrilled" that the program would continue, even if it wasn't coming to his hometown of Chattanooga. "We wanted to give (the AJM board) an option," Steele said. "Maybe they felt like fundraising in Mobile had run its course, that things were a little stale after 48 years. But at the end of the day, we're going to be there and support them no matter what." As of Tuesday afternoon, the Friends Web site had raised $71,376 in pledges from people in 42 states. Lori Jo Carbonneau, a Friends co-founder and 1986 America's Junior Miss, said she was confident that nationwide support would continue through the Web site. "The darkest hour brought out the national support that I don't know if Mobilians really knew was there," Carbonneau said. "Our number one goal was for the program to carry on. Our number one wish is that it carried on in Mobile." Both Patterson and Carbonneau said next year's half-budget would not affect either the amount of scholarships given at the national level or the two weeks of activities the 50 AJM contestants participate in prior to the national finals. "We hope and expect that the experience will stay the same," Patterson said, though activities vary each year depending on local sponsorship. AJM awarded almost $145,000 in scholarship awards at the national level in 2005, according to records. Since its inception in 1958, more than $87.7 million in scholarship awards have been awarded at local, state and national levels. "It's the number-one scholarship program for high school senior girls in the country," Patterson said. "Often you don't hear excellence in education and Alabama in the same sentence." The 2005 winner, Kelli Lynn Schutz, said Tuesday's announcement did not surprise her. "I had no doubt in my mind that the program would continue," Schutz said. "I had been praying about it so much, and I knew that someone somehow would come along and save it. I don't think that not having the AJM program on national television will affect the program at all. "None of the girls compete with the thought of, 'Hey, if I do this I'll get on national TV.' They all do it for the experience." And as for giving up her AJM title after a year? "I'm so thrilled that another girl will get to be America's Junior Miss," Schutz said. "I've been it for a little over a month now, and I had no idea it would be this much fun."

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