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Wednesday, July 09, 2003

By Virginia Kopas Joe, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Chet Welch never gets the Monday morning blues. He has a job he likes so much he does it for free.

Beauty pageant coach Chet Welch has mentored eight Miss Pennsylvanias, including the current Miss Pennsylvania, Melissa Wills.
Click photo for larger image.

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Anyone interested in the Miss Pennsylvania pageant can contact Welch at RD 3, Box 376 Ford City, PA 16226, call 724-763-3717 or e-mail ed@misswesternpa.org. The western Miss Pennsylvania Web site is www.misswesternpa.org.

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Welch of Ford City is a beauty pageant coach. Those on the circuit say he is in fact "The Coach" to get if a contestant really wants to be a winner.

He has mentored eight Miss Pennsylvanias, including the past five to hold the title. And of that accomplished quintet, four have made it to the semifinals of the ultimate in walk and talk: The Miss America pageant. One of his "girls," as he ever-so-paternally puts it, was second runner-up in the Big Show.

And you wonder why Welch puts in an average of four hours a day, after his day job as a pharmaceutical customer service rep, with a smile.

"Chet Welch works hard at promoting and polishing the image of beauty pageants," says his prized pupil, Susan Spafford, Miss Pennsylvania 1999 and the second runner-up to Miss America that year.

Welch bristles when you use the phrase "beauty queen" when talking about his charges. He chats up resumes. To say that someone like Spafford is a mere beauty queen denies her courage and credentials.

Spafford was given up by her impoverished Korean parents at the age of 3 and was adopted by an Erie couple. She went on to be a model daughter, scholarship student, community activist and gifted classic violinist. She now has a Ph.D. and is a professor of violin performance at Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., where she continues to work with outreach music programs for needy kids.

And she's a big fan of all things pageant, and especially of her former boss.

Accomplished women like Spafford, beautiful on the inside and the out, who are among the 24 in the Lehigh Valley this week preparing for Saturday's Miss Pennsylvania contest and the right to represent our state in September's Miss America Scholarship Pageant. Four of them, Christina Acosta, Melissa Wills, Candace Otto and Victoria Bechtold, are from Western Pennsylvania.

Preliminary judging takes place at 8 p.m. tomorrow and Friday at the Nazareth Area High School Theater in Nazareth. The finals are at 8 Saturday night.

Each contestant is between the ages of 17 and 24, has a talent and an issue she cares about and will work for if she gets the bully pulpit that comes with the title. Each won titles during the year in local pageants held throughout the state.

Oh yes, they'll be physically fit in their swimsuits, which despite years of complaints from women's groups, still remain a part of the judging.

"But isn't physical fitness something we all strive for?" Welch gently reminds. "The contestants work out a lot, especially with weights."

This weekend Welch will be cheering from the audience. He won't be backstage; his work is done.

"These young women are polished and they are contenders," he says. "They've been working for this moment all their lives. I just help them recognize it."

And there's no magic to the process, Welch says, "just practical stuff."

The contestants come to him after winning a sanctioned Miss Pennsylvania-Miss America qualifer. He decided whether to coach her based on a young woman's potential, her desire -- and his time.

This year he has four proteges. Together they have spent time determining each candidate's strengths and weaknesses. Does she need a voice coach? What are her best colors? Does she apply makeup properly? Does she need help with her posture?

"And exercise, exercise, exercise," Welch says.

"I also insist candidates do a lot of reading and research to bone up on current events. Most importantly, we find ways to put their personal platforms, their real passions, into action."

Most girls use the $500 they win from local pageants to help pay for extra training. Their families and local business and civic sponsors pay the rest.

Welch doesn't charge. Nor is he paid for being executive director of the Miss Armstrong County and Miss Southwestern Pa. contests or a pageant producer. Everyone involved in all levels of the Miss America organization is a volunteer.

"These young women are already accomplished when they come to me. My coaching makes them realize they must compete against themselves to be the best," he says.

This week is the penultimate test. The women will be judged all three nights in four categories. Their appearance, including posture, confidence and choice of gown, counts for 15 percent of the vote. Ditto for the swimsuits.

The talent presentation counts for 30 percent and the interview, the tie-breaking 40 percent. And, no, Welch does not know the questions in advance.

So, how does a mild-mannered hometown boy ("I was born, raised here, went to Ford City High and have no desire to live anywhere else") become the driving force in the always competitive, often caricatured and, some say, cutthroat world of beauty pageants?

"I really like it," Welch says.

He must. Welch, 43 and single, got involved when he joined the Ford City Jaycees back in 1981 and his committee assignment was to find sponsors for a local girl who wanted to enter the Miss Pennsylvania contest.

That was right up his alley. He remembers being so smitten by the face of Miss America featured annually on the Kellogg's Corn Flakes box when he was young that he begged his mother to buy the cereal. A cereal he didn't even like.

"Of course, there are perks," he says with a wink. "I've made some terrific and lifelong friends. I've traveled. I'm dealing with accomplished young people who honestly want to make the world a better place," he says with all the practiced sincerity of one of his contestants.

His young charges believe him. And so do most folks around Ford City.

Connie Klug of Gibsonia, a colleague at Omnicare Long Term Care Pharmacy, gushes.

"He cares about people, whether they are clients or pretty contestants.

"The pageant is his baby. He takes us to meet the girls, he lets us touch the gowns. People come in just to see his desk. It's loaded with photos of him with beauty queens.

"Everybody in this town is proud of him."

Welch is serious about and darn good at what he does, agrees Marlene Wynne, executive producer of the Miss Pennsylvania pageant.

Welch, she says, "does not pump out 'pageant patties.'"

"He has an eye for talent, and his genuine interest in helping young women from Western Pennsylvania win," Wynne says.

She should know. Welch mentored her daughter Marla, now Marla Wynne Birch, in 1990 when she won the Miss Pennsylvania crown and was a top-10 finalist for Miss America.

Welch's incredible record of winners -- the most of any such coach, says Wynne -- is attributed to the fact he works to submerge his charges into the real intent of the pageant scene.

And, envelope, please, that is?

"S-C-H-O-L-A-R-S-H-I-P money," she spells out.

The winner Saturday night gets $6,000 for college and to help go on to become Miss America, a contest that doles out more than $40 million for the cause each year. The Miss America Scholarship Pageant, as it is officially called, bills itself as the world's biggest provider of scholarship money. When Spafford was a second runner-up back in 1999, she got $30,000, and, she says she paid off her undergraduate loans.

And naysayers need look no further than Kaye Lani Rae Ralko, a young woman from the small town of Monroeville, Mich., who entered a local competition to earn money to pay her nursing school bills. She captured not only a local and state title, but also was named Miss America 1988. She used that scholarship money to open a hospice in her hometown.

And, yes, these statuesque, sophisticated and smart women do have a plan to save the world. Welch points to the Miss Pennsylvania contestant from Murrysville, Westmoreland County. Candace Otto, 23, a recent Northwestern graduate, is an advocate for the National Student Partnerships, a national group that links impoverished Americans with personal, social and business resources to help them get jobs.

Of her involvement (she started the first NSP office in Illinois and directs 60 volunteers), she says, "young people have the energy and optimism to change in the world."

Likewise, Autumn Marisa, 22, of Waynesburg, Greene County, the reigning Miss Pennsylvania, used her year to get the word out about Make-A-Wish Foundation. She "got involved" after seeing the hope this organization gave a cousin who suffered with cancer.

Marisa is a Penn State graduate and a lyrical dancer and sometimes works as an extra on the daytime soap "As the World Turns."

Welch points to these accomplished young women to show why the stereotyped "baton-twirling blonde without a clue" is cruel and untrue.

OK, you can twirl but, for gosh sakes, care about and work for something, too.

Welch says that Sandra Bullock's movie of a couple of years back, "Miss Congeniality," while cashing in on such silly images, got to the heart of pageant contestants.

"The movie's message was that these are truly dedicated, educated, hard-working women with a mission," Welch says.

"I've always known that."

Correction/Clarification: (Published July 11, 2003) Autumn Marisa, the reigning Miss Pennsylvania, will not only crown her successor but serve as an emcee of the pageant being held tomorrow in Nazareth, Northampton County. A story on beauty pageant coach Chet Welch had said the Waynesburg, Greene County, native would be out of the country and unable to attend.