There She Was, Miss America

The Strip: Las Vegas Podcast

Go to the blog (VegasHappensHere.Com) or the podcast site (TheStripPodcast.Com) and tell us what is "Vegas wrong" about the image from a stain glass window at the Guardian Angel Cathedral. Know it? E-mail TheStripPodcast [at] aol.com or call 702-997-3300 by March 21. If we draw your correct answer, you pick from the prize list at TheStripPodcast.Com. Email: [e-mail] Twitter: @TheStripPodcast Voicemail: 702-997-3300 Less than two months ago, Miss America 1943 Jean Bartel was in Las Vegas for the pageant’s 90th anniversary celebration. She was the oldest living winner of the pageant and she had played the Strip as a singer at Bugsy Siegel’s Flamingo back in the day. Steve interviewed her for his Jan. 19 column for the Las Vegas Weekly, and she sounded hale and hearty then. But on March 6, she died at the age of 87, so we remember her by playing Bartel’s final interview. In it, she offers her recollections as a groundbreaking Miss America who led the charge to create the scholarship program that is now its hallmark. Bartel also was the first Miss America to go to college, sold the most bonds in 1943 to support the World War II and even helped the US with some espionage work during the Cold War. During this conversation, she tells of hanging out with Danny Thomas at the Flamingo, reveals that her crown is on display at the Smithsonian and recalls Beth Myerson, Vanessa Williams and many other former beauty queens. In Banter: A Provo adventure, a word about cousin Paul Stanley, Ruffin doubts on the Cosmo, Caesars takes Fontainbleau’s castoff show and more.