Marilyn Van Derbur

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Marilyn Van Derbur (1981)

Marilyn Elaine Van Derbur (born June 16, 1937 in Denver , Colorado ) is a writer and motivational speaker .

Career

Marilyn Elaine Van Derbur was born in Denver in 1937 to Francis Stacy Van Derbur (1907-1984) and his wife Gwendolyn (1908-1996), née Olinger. Her childhood was overshadowed by the Second World War . She became Miss Colorado in 1957 and Miss America in 1958 . After her coronation as Miss America, she returned to the University of Colorado , where she earned a degree. During her studies she became a member of the Phi Beta Kappa . After graduation, she moved to New York City , where she became a broadcaster for AT&T The Bell Telephone Hour and ran ten shows for Candid Camera . She was also a television host for The Miss America Pageant for five years .

Along with Murray S. Hoffman , president of the Colorado Heart Association , and Jerome Biffle , the gold medal winner in the long jump at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki ( Finland ), they founded one of the earliest programs for jogging in order to promote heart health.

In her 20s, she started working as a motivational speaker. In her mid-thirties she was named The Outstanding Woman Speaker in America .

In 1990, when she was 53, she told a newspaper reporter that she was an incest survivor . The story appeared as a cover story in The Denver Post the next morning . Her wealthy, well-known society father had sexually abused her between the ages of five and eighteen. Within weeks of the article appearing in the newspaper, over 3,000 men and women from Denver and its metropolitan area got in touch to offer help and support. She then founded the Survivor United Network (SUN) organization, to which she contributed tens of thousands of dollars . In the period that followed, up to 500 people came to one of the 35 different self-help groups that the SUN ran every week. When People Magazine then displayed her picture as a cover, nationwide survivors who had been victims of sexual abuse turned to her for help and support. She then expanded her organization accordingly. At the SUN self-help groups, people were able to talk about their fates, many for the first time.

In the next 20 years she spoke in over 500 cities. During this time she wrote the work Miss America By Day: Lessons Learned from Ultimate Betrayals and Unconditional Love , in which she presented her experiences and insights into incest to the public. The book was in the top 10 on Colorado's bestseller list for nonfiction for 13 weeks. In 2003 she received the Most Inspirational Book Award (first place) from Writer's Digest for her work . The book has been reprinted several times since then and is used as a textbook at colleges in social work and child development classes.

In 2011 she received the Lifetime Achievement Award .

Van Derbur got married twice. She was married to Gary Austin Nady from June 1, 1961 until their divorce on March 6, 1962. She then married her second husband Lawrence Atlivaick Atler on February 14, 1964. The couple had a daughter named Jennifer.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Nation's Fairest Compete For Role Of Miss America, Rock Hill Herald, August 30, 1958
  2. a b Jeanne Varnell and ML Hanson: Women of consequence: the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame , Boulder, Colorado: Johnson Books, 1999, pp 246-252, ISBN 978-1-555-66214-1
  3. Francis Stacy Van Derbur in the database of Find a Grave . Retrieved September 30, 2017 (English).
  4. Gwendolyn Olinger Van Derbur in the Find a Grave database . Retrieved September 30, 2017 (English).
  5. Marling, Karal Ann: Debutante: Rites and Regalia of American Debdom , Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004, p 146, ISBN 978-0-700-61317-5 .
  6. a b David Holthouse: Crowning Achievement , West Word, June 24 of 2004.
  7. ^ Trish Kinney: Standing with Miss America 1958 , Huffington Post, March 18, 2010.
  8. ^ Responding effectively to abuse, Herald Palladium, May 3, 2010.
  9. ^ Profiles, alamosanews.com.
  10. ^ National Philanthropy Day Colorado, npdcolorado.org.
predecessor Office successor
Marian McKnight Miss America
1958
Mary Ann Mobley
predecessor Office successor
Polly Childs Miss Colorado
1957
Cynthia Cullen