Miss SA back home to spoil her father

SHE may wear the Miss SA crown, but she’ll always be her doting dad’s little princess.

Tamaryn Green, 23, moved to Joburg when she was crowned Miss SA in May. This weekend, she returned to Cape Town just in time for Father’s Day.

David Green, the over-protective father of South Africa’s most beautiful woman, said he had always been supportive of Tamaryn’s ambition to be a beauty queen.

“I took her to her first pageant and she did very well and came second. I asked her during the car ride home if she was disappointed, and she told me it wasn’t about winning, it was about taking part.

“I knew then that I would be driving her to pageants all year long,” laughed David.

He said Tamaryn had offered to use the R10 000 prize money she had won at a pageant to help pay for her studies. “That’s amazing for a young person, to be so selfless, so I told her, ‘My girl, it’s your money, you do with it what you like’.”

Despite her fame and fortune, David is adamant that his beauty queen daughter will enrol for her sixth year in medicine at UCT, and complete her degree.

“She’s never been one to leave something incomplete,” he said.

Tamaryn had always been a loving person. “She was just this bundle of energy as a child, very playful and funny, too. She always wanted to try out new things and was never satisfied with being mediocre.”

Tamaryn said Father’s Day had always been celebrated in a particular way in the Green household.

“We would go to church, then visit my grandparents and maybe my uncles. There was always lunch after that.”

This year, the family will celebrate the day with a special luncheon at The Table Bay Hotel.

She said her most poignant memory of her dad was also her earliest memory of him.

“We had this little blue Bible that had The Lord’s Prayer in it, and I don’t know if he read from it but I remember he would always come into the bedroom at night and we would say it together. That’s something that’s really stuck in my mind.

“My dad loves exploring and I think I got that from him. He’s the most supportive person, and throughout school and university he would always try and help even if he didn’t know much about (a particular) subject,” she said.