Teen beauty queen makes breast cancer awareness her platform
Brookie Brown
Brookie Brown, newly crowned Miss River City Outstanding Teen, confessed she originally thought beauty pageants were about wearing pretty dresses and getting your makeup done.
When the junior at Christ’s Church Academy realized there was scholarship money to be won and an opportunity to promote her platform of educating young people about breast cancer she decided to give it a try and, at her first pageant, won the title.
“It was so fun and exciting to meet new girls from all over. Each of them was so talented and any one of them deserved to win,” said Brown. “I was standing on stage and they announced contestant number seven, but I didn’t realize I’d won until they said my name. I was just blown away and speechless!”
Brown is more than a pretty face. The San Jose resident holds a 4.7 GPA and has accumulated over 1,000 community service hours, many with the Donna Foundation, which raises money for women with “giant medical bills as a result of their diagnosis,” she said. Brown was Sponsorship Director’s Assistant, a position she created in the sixth grade at San Jose Elementary School.
Brown explained she has experienced the devastation of the disease when her maternal grandmother died from breast cancer. “I have an incredible job and role in the community to push awareness about breast cancer,” she said. “The youngest person in Jacksonville who has been diagnosed was six years old. Many people are not aware that it can happen to someone so young.”
Her duties as Miss River City Outstanding Teen include appearances, presentations and attending the Miss Florida Outstanding Teen competition in Lakeland in June. Her mother, Valerie Brown, is with her all the way. “My mom and I are definitely a team – from picking out dresses and filling out applications – she’s there,” she said.
Brown has volunteered at San Jose Elementary as a summer camp counselor for five years, is active with the Youth Leadership Jacksonville program, vice president of her school’s Key Club, which works with Ronald McDonald House and the homeless, and she is working on publishing a cookbook to raise money for the Donna Foundation. “It’s all about time management,” she remarked.
Brown is undecided about whether she will sing “O Mio Bambino Caro” in Italian again for her next competition, but she definitely hopes to win scholarships to realize her dream of attending University of Florida to become a pediatric oncologist.
By Peggy Harrell Jennings
Resident Community News
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