Washington County Enterprise-Leader
First Festival Queens Selected As Parade Marshals
The first two teenage girls chosen to wear the Miss Apple Harvest crown will serve as grand marshals for the 2017 Arkansas Apple Festival parade.
The parade starts at 10 a.m. Saturday and goes around Lincoln Square.
The former Sandy Samples was named the first Miss Apple Harvest in 1976. The next year, the former Cindy Prince was crowned winner of the 1977 Miss Apple Harvest pageant.
Sandy Samples is now Sandy Tennant. She and her husband live in Farmington and have three children and five grandchildren.
Tennant said she still has fond memories of being in the first pageant.
“It was so very sweet and such an exciting experience,” Tennant said, adding, “It’s always been so close to my heart.”
Winning, Tennant said, was just “icing on the cake” for being involved in the pageant.
Rainy Laycox, who still serves on the Festival committee, was instrumental in encouraging Lincoln High girls to sign up to participate in the first pageant, Tennant said.
“We were just from Lincoln. We had never been in a pageant.”
Tennant signed up and she remembers the pageant held a tea for all the contestants to get to know each other.
The pageant was held in the old school cafeteria and on the night of the event, the girls sang and did a choreographed dance with the music. Each performed an individual talent and Tennant sang a song called “The Snake” by Oscar Brown Jr. She was accompanied on guitar by Buster Johnson of Lincoln.
The song was appropriate for her, Tennant said, because she was a senior and would be leaving for college soon. The song was cautioning listeners about being careful about people you trust.
The judges selected five finalists and each was asked an individual question. Tennant couldn’t remember the questions for the other finalists but said her question was “What time period would you have chosen to live in?”
She answered during the time of Jesus because she would have loved to have seen him and watched him perform miracles.
The next fall, as a freshman at the University of Arkansas, Tennant was able to represent Arkansas in the national Apple Festival pageant. She was chosen runner-up for Miss Congeniality.
Tennant said she remembers many visits to the Apple Festival over the years.
“It’s always been such a positive experience. It’s just one of those wonderful things a small town can do.”
Tennant graduated from the University of Arkansas and taught 16 years in education. Her first year she taught in Lincoln Consolidated School District and her last years in public education, she taught at Farmington.
For the past 20 years, she has been director of the After School Program, held at Williams Elementary in Farmington.
Cindy Prince is now Cindy Sides and lives in Newport, located in the northeastern part of the state. She and her husband have owned a car dealership since 1990.
Sides said the Miss Apple Harvest pageant was the only pageant she ever entered. She was 17 years old and a senior at Lincoln High School when she entered the pageant. She played the piano as her talent.
Sides said the following year as a freshman at the University of Arkansas, she participated in a national pageant in Pennsylvania as Lincoln’s Miss Apple Harvest.
Her mother served as her chaperone and her father and some family friends traveled to the pageant to cheer her on.
“It was really neat,” Sides remembers.
“I was in an apple picking contest and there was a talent show.”
The national pageant included a ball and military cadets served as the contestants’ escorts, Sides said.
Sides said she went to the Arkansas Apple Festival every year but doesn’t recall a lot about it since it was about 40 years ago.
She does remember the Lincoln community as a close-knit community. She grew up on a farm and was active in Future Homemakers of America in high school (girls weren’t allowed in Future Farmers of America back then), played basketball and was a cheerleader.
Sides has three grown children and five grandchildren. Her mother, Cleta Prince, still lives in Lincoln.