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| Birth Name(s) : Heather Whitestone McCallum |
Date of Birth: 1973 |
| Status:
Married
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Partner:
N/A |
| Profession:
Model/Public Figure |
Official Site
Go to the Heather Whitestone Official Homepage |
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Full Heather Whitestone Biography
Heather Whitestone McCallum became the first Miss America with a disability on September 17th, 1994. In that moment, she has proved to the world that no obstacle is too big and that with hard work, determination and God's help, we can accomplish whatever we set out to do. Heather's accomplishments are particularly astounding considering the fact that she has been profoundly deaf since she was eighteen months old. Heather was rushed to the hospital with a dangerously high fever, the cause of which was later diagnosed as the Haemophilus influenzae virus. Her doctors also suspect that she simultaneously contracted meningitis as she had a severe blood infection. According to the doctors, she was only hours from death when they administered two powerful antibiotics that reduced her fever and saved her life.
A few months later on Christmas Day, her mother accidentally dropped a pile of pans on the kitchen floor and Heather, who was playing nearby, did not even flinch. At the Children's Hospital in Birmingham, Alabama, Heather tested as "profoundly deaf" with no hearing in either ear. Her condition was concluded to be the result of her near fatal illness.
Ironically, Heather's deafness was a blessing. Throughout her childhood, Heather barely heard the voices of discouragement that hearing people often hear. She did not hear the doctor telling her family that she wouldn't develop past a third grade level. She never heard the vulgar language that permeates our culture. She never heard the voices of those who said she could never dance ballet, let alone speak.
Since childhood, Heather's life has resolved around her ballet and Heather considers herself fortunate to have had the opportunity to dance before 40 million viewers at the Miss America Pageant. Heather was also featured dancer at Robert Schuller's Crystal Cathedral Church in California where she performed for seven days in the Glory of Christmas pageant. Heather made her professional ballet debut with the Alabama Ballet Company in the spring of 1996.
Since relinquishing her title in September of 1995, Heather has had the opportunity to work with several corporate, non-profit and civic organizations. For more than eight years, Heather has toured both nationally and internationally motivating corporate, civic and religious organizations. Currently, Heather's speaking engagements are handled exclusively by the Washington Speakers Bureau. In addition to her speaking engagements, Heather has been proud to represent AmSouth Bank, the Alabama Tourism Board, Express Oil Change, and CitiBank of Asia. For many years Heather has been a spokesperson for the worldwide leader in hearing instruments, Starkey Laboratories, and its subsidiary, Audibel. She recently joined the Cochlear Americas as a spokesperson subsequent to her cochlear implant surgery on August 7th, 2002.
One little known fact is that Heather was the star of a music video for the hit country song "How Do You Fall In Love," which was performed by the Alabama. Heather was proud to be a part of helping that song rise to #2 on the country music charts.
In 2002, Heather appeared on CNN with Connie Chung, she made three appearances on ABC's Good Morning America program and a guest appearance on the ABC's daytime program The View. Heather was also featured in print articles in USA Today and People magazine in the fall of 2002. |
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Additional Heather Whitestone Biography
Whitestone was born and raised in Dothan for the first eleven years of her life. She went to Central Institute for the Deaf in 1984 when she was doing poorly in the mainstream environment. At CID, she improved her reading by six grade levels in just three years and eventually graduated in 1987 with a 3.6 GPA. Whitestone moved to Birmingham at age sixteen following her parents' divorce. Whitestone attended the Alabama School of Fine Arts for a year and graduated from Berry High School (now Hoover High School) in 1991.
Whitestone competed in many beauty pageants, winning the Shelby County Junior Miss pageant. Her first year in the Miss America system, Heather won the Miss Jacksonville State University title and went on to be 1st runner up to Miss Alabama 1992, Kim Wimmer. The following year she won the Miss Point Mallard competition and once again, placed 1st runner up to Miss Alabama, Kalyn Chapman (who had placed as Heather's 1st runner up at Point Mallard. Kalyn then went on to win Miss Leeds Area pageant to be eligible to compete at Miss Alabama). The following year Heather won the Miss Cullman Area title and finally won the Miss Alabama title in 1994. She was the first deaf woman to win this title.
Whitestone represented Alabama at the 1994 Miss America pageant held in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Despite being profoundly deaf, she performed ballet en pointe to the song "Via Dolorosa" as her talent, winning the preliminary talent competition, as well as the preliminary swimsuit competition. She was the first double preliminary winner from Alabama since the 1978 Miss America pageant (to choose Miss America 1979) That double winner, Teresa Cheatham, also a former Miss Point Mallard, was 1st runner up to Miss America, Kylene Barker of Virginia. When Heather was crowned Miss America 1995, she could not hear host Regis Philbin say her name, and it was not until the first runner-up gestured to her that she realized she had won.
Since her win, she completed her studies at Jacksonville State University, and has promoted awareness of deaf issues. She has also spoken out in detail about her close relationship with God, one that she has had ever since she rediscovered church as a teenager. She wrote about her life experiences in a book called Let God Surprise You: Trust God with Your Dreams.
In 2002, she courted controversy among the Deaf community when she decided to have a cochlear implant operation in order to hear to an extent in her right ear, something that she had never been able to experience before. Whitestone said the primary motivator for electing the surgery was an incident when she did not hear her son's cries for help. She said that she has not regretted her decision, thanking her family for supporting her.
Whitestone's mother, Daphne Gray, noted in the book she wrote on her daughter, Today's Heroes: Heather Whitestone, that she is highly criticized in the Deaf community for her choice to speak and read lips instead of signing. (See manualism and oralism.) Although the book claims Whitestone wanted to sign at first, her mom refused to allow it. Whitestone does know sign language now, but she is reported to speak out against it.
She also speaks highly of her experiences in classical dance, something that she had excelled in since she was a child. |
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Heather Whitestone Quote(s)
| Through ballet I was fortunate to find a place to escape, a refuge from my feelings of being an outsider. The dance studio was the one place I felt accepted and "just like everybody else" was in the dance studio. Hoping to improve the rhythm of my speech, my mother had enrolled me in a ballet class when I was five years old. The ballet class boosted my self-esteem. |
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