Bath County celebrating 63rd May Day festivities

This Saturday, Owingsville will be full of excitement with the annual May Day Festival and Miss Bath County Pageant. For Michele Staton Tindall, the 1991 Miss Bath County Pageant was a lasting experience. Michele is a Bath County native, the daughter of Mickey and Pashia Reeves Staton, who was a contestant in the 1967 Miss Bath County Pageant.

Twenty-five years ago, Michele described herself as a shy, introverted person and initially didn’t sign up to be part of the pageant until a school visit by pageant coordinator Faye Davis changed her mind.

“She talked about the pageant with so much excitement and reminded all of us how important May Day was to our town,” Michele remembered. “She made it seem like a lot of fun and really made all of us feel good about signing up.”

The process wasn’t an easy one—during the time of the May Day Festival there was still school matters to be taken care of. Preparations for college, final exams and preparing for graduation taxed the contestants each year, so the addition of rehearsing to become Miss Bath County made the time even more stressful.

For Michele, it was more challenging to practice and perform in front of her classmates than the actual pageant. While she said there was no formal training, the contestants had to rehearse their stage presence, poise and their spotlight talent performances. Michele’s talent performance was a piano monologue focused on Operation Desert Storm. “It was pretty emotional for me and I took it very seriously—I really didn’t want to mess it up,” she said.

Miss Kentucky Nancy Cox, who is now an anchor at WLEX, was the emcee for the 1991 pageant and spent a lot of time with the contestants. “I was probably most excited about the interview portion of the competition, I really liked meeting with the judges,” said Michele. But, as with any production, things don’t always go without some kind of problem. Michele recollects that a couple of her most vivid memories included dropping a mustard filled pickle on her evening gown at the dress rehearsal and stumbling as she walked up the stairs the first time she walked out. “It got easier as the night went on,” she said.

When it was time to announce the 1991 Miss Bath County, Michele said she was shocked and in disbelief when she was crowned. Her best memory was running out to the end of the ramp and hugging her family. “I remember dropping down on the floor in that big dress at the end of the ramp and being surrounded by the people who meant the most in the world to me.”

Overall, Michele says her experience was a positive one; that she was happy to be part of a Bath County tradition. To those young ladies who would follow, she offers this advice, “be exactly who you are. It’s easy to get caught up in having the right dress or the right shoes and the right make-up and the right hair and all the “right” things in the eyes of a few people. Be who you are and have fun. Enjoy the journey.”

Today, Michele Staton-Tindall resides in Lexington with her family and is an associate professor in the college of social work at the University of Kentucky, with a joint appointment in the College of Medicine and UK Center on Drug and Alcohol Research. She teaches courses focused on drug use and crime and is the principal investigator for a study funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse focused on incarcerated women.