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DoraLee whips around town in her lime-green Monte
Carlo replica racer. She has held a license to steer big tour buses since
1991, and recently, she burned enough rubber to take home the trophy for
Ultimate Go-Kart Champion at Kicks Entertainment. That’s DoraLee Durham, the new queen of
Springfield. She sports bright-pink lipstick, and a perfectly
pumped-up coal-black coiffure. With a tall, glittery tiara perched on her head,
Queen DoraLee might as well be queen of the world. “I went to Atlanta, Ga., this weekend and I
walked away with — I don’t want to say everything, but I
walked away with everything,” she says. Durham clinched the American Beauties Plus Woman
national title and a bejeweled scepter at the Holiday Inn Select South in
Atlanta on Feb. 10. The modest competition included five divisions; the
“Woman” category embraces plus-size women over the age of 40. So how much woman is Durham? With true ladylike discretion, Durham says demurely:
“A woman never tells her age or her weight.”
Durham competed against seven primped participants
for the Illinois tiara, and 10 state winners went toe to sequined toe for
the crown. Actually Durham raked in an armful of crowns, leaving Georgia
with kudos for talent, spokesmodel, calendar girl for October/November, and
the top prize of the evening. Durham’s tiara is just one of many hats she
wears. “I don’t like to be bored,”
Durham says. “At the pageant this weekend, the reigning American
Beauties Plus Woman queen kept telling me, ‘Sit down, relax.’
It’s, like, ‘No, I need to be doing something. You don’t
know me very well. My mother will tell you, I cannot sit and do
nothing.’ ”
DoraLee is wife to husband Chris, 38, and a mother to
sons Michael, 20, and Timothy, 17. When she isn’t behind the wheel of
a tour bus for Springfield’s Classic Limousine, she drives senior
citizens from Hickory Glen Active Retirement Community. She serves as
assistant pastor of Fairview Baptist Church, on the North End; sells Avon
products; and is an avid NASCAR fan. Pageants and NASCAR racing don’t typically go
hand in hand, but
Durham prefers that her life never be boring. She and Chris chose their
favorite driver by picking his number from a hat at their first NASCAR
party. Soon after, the couple started driving a replica race car, and
painted the number 18 on the side.
Durham croons bluegrass and Southern gospel at Holy
Ground Coffeehouse on the fourth Saturday of each month with the New
Jerusalem Singers. Her voice is so powerful, she jokes, passersby can hear her singing
three blocks away — even when she’s not using a microphone. Cindy Spellbrink, manager and keyboardist of the New
Jerusalem Singers, confirms that Durham takes the lead on most of the songs
they perform, singing with enough force to get her point across. The pageant judges got the point. For her performing talent, Durham belted out the
Loretta Lynn number “Your Squaw is on the Warpath.” Coupled
with her nonperforming talent of making and designing American Indian
clothing and regalia, Durham — who says she is seven-eighths Cherokee —
tallied up another award. Durham tried out a few tunes for an audience of
Hickory Glen residents before the competition. Her pageant platform is
“always help a senior,” an issue Durham has been interested in
since she began working as a driver and advocate at the retirement center.
She chauffeurs seniors to appointments and helps them in and out of the
vehicle. “The everyday interaction with the
seniors, I think, she really takes it to heart,” says Cynthia
Fischer, Hickory Glen activity director.
Wearing the sash and pageant regalia is a dream
Durham has tried to fulfill off and on since entering her first pageant, in
her hometown of Baltimore, Md., at the age of 17. She won third runner-up
in the Maryland Junior Miss pageant.
In 1986, she decided to go for the crown again.
Durham sought the Mrs. Illinois designation to contend for the Mrs. America
pageant, but didn’t qualify to move on to the next round. Durham hung up her sequins for some years, before
trying again last year for the Illinois award. She went the Mrs. Plus
America route, capturing the state prize but failing to place nationally. Durham hasn’t been confident all her life, but
now, in true pageant style, she prefers to accentuate the positive. She
does divulge her secret to holding her head high. “There was someone in my past life that would
always tell me that I would never amount to anything. I was no good for
nothing,” Durham says. “I wanted to prove them wrong, and
[show] that I can do whatever I set my mind to. “If I want to be a beauty queen, I can be a
beauty queen.”
Durham says the tiara, sash, flashy pins, and
recognition are nice, but they’re not her impetus for stepping out
onto the runway in a plus-size beauty competition. The recognition, she
says, gives her an opportunity to show plus-size women that they can do
whatever they want to do, whether it’s pageantry or competitive
go-kart driving. “I’m not a size 3, and with the American
Beauties Plus pageant it shows women that you don’t have to be a size
3 to be beautiful,” Durham says. “You could be a size 14; you
could be a size 24, and even bigger than that. It’s all in how you
take care of yourself.”
Just pageant-speak? Coming from Durham, the sermon
sounds convincing. “I think that her just knowing what her
standards are, that helps her a lot,” Spellbrink says. “She’s not a fake, she doesn’t
pretend to be something she’s not. I appreciate that about
her.”
Two days after the competition, the newly crowned
queen beams and sits with her chin held high. She places her hand with the
big sparkly rock atop
the other in her best competition form. Durham practiced her pageant persona for months. From
the walk to the talk to the way she holds her hands, Durham’s got it
down. “My husband said, ‘Put an apple under
your chin and walk around with it,’ ” Durham says. “
‘You’ll for sure keep your head up.’ ”
Her husband, Chris, was perhaps her biggest booster.
He helped her decide what to wear, and, at the competition, tuxedo-clad
Chris stood by the stage, helping the contenders step on and off the
platform. Chris had no idea when the couple left Springfield
for the competition that he would be helping people on and off the runway,
but the officials needed a tall person, and Chris’ 6-foot-1 frame
came in handy. He was happy to oblige. “I pretty much knew she would get it,”
Chris says. “I had a feeling ever since we left. I was very
proud.”
For Durham’s pageant groundwork, she enlisted
the help of Fischer, her co-worker at Hickory Glen and onetime Miss Teen
USA participant, to teach her how to glide across the stage. Fischer worked
with Durham for weeks and gave her a few tips on sitting correctly,
controlling nervousness, and positioning her hands prettily for interviews.
They practiced answering questions without the “ums” and
“ahs” that make anxious wannabe queens stick out. “Years ago, I was in the Miss Teen USA thing,
and I had a friend who helped me walk and stand and pose,” Fischer
says, “and, years later, I still know how to do it.”
They practiced. Durham gave the competition the same
intensity that her favorite driver, J.J. Yeley, might give a spin around
the track. “A lot of prayer and quiet time, then
it’s all 90 miles an hour,” Durham says. Durham’s secret weapon was a choreographed walk
she prepared herself. The other pageant contestants did the elementary
walk-pose-turn combination. But Durham dazzled. For the sportswear competition,
she wore a sequined blouse and a glittery jacket, buttoned. She made her
entrance and posed. She walked to her next mark on the stage unbuttoned the
jacket, but kept it closed. As she circled the end of the runway, Durham
tossed the jacket over her shoulder.
“I worked it really good,” she says. Durham gets to cool her high heels for a year because
of a clause in her American Beauties Plus contract that prohibits her from
competing, but she has big plans for next year. Durham will put on her
evening attire again, but this time to face more intense competition: The
2007 pageant winners from five divisions vie for the coveted title of
Ambassador Elite. Winning the prize would make Durham queen for a
lifetime.
Contact Marissa Monson at
mmonson@illinoistimes.com
This article appears in Feb 15-21, 2007.
