{"id":2071,"date":"2010-09-25T18:39:58","date_gmt":"2010-09-26T00:39:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.fairplex.com\/blog\/fairblog\/?p=2071"},"modified":"2010-09-25T18:39:58","modified_gmt":"2010-09-26T00:39:58","slug":"1960-l-a-county-fair-queen-shares-memories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.fairplex.com\/blog\/fairblog\/2010\/09\/25\/1960-l-a-county-fair-queen-shares-memories\/","title":{"rendered":"1960 L.A. County Fair Queen Shares Memories"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Barbara Bushnell adjusts the crown for her sister Carolyn when she was chosen Queen of the 1960 L.A. County Fair.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nSept. 1 is particularly significant to Carolyn Bushnell of Glendora. First, it\u2019s her birthday; second, it was the day she was crowned Queen of the L.A. County Fair in 1960. Her sister Barbara, named Miss San Gabriel Valley that summer, was also a princess in her court. Bushnell was crowned by then-California Governor Pat Brown.
\nShe was 20, and it was the first beauty pageant she ever entered, and would become the last.
\nSome 900 women from Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut competed for the honor. The first step was a vote by the college\u2019s student body to narrow the field down to 14 finalists who would then become the queen and 10 princesses.
\n\u201cIt was a huge thing in the Valley,\u201d she recalls, not too dissimilar from Pasadena\u2019s Tournament of Roses Queen and her Court. \u201cWe were chosen at the beginning of June and then through the summer we did a lot of publicity about the Fair.\u201d
\n
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Carolyn Bushnell of Glendora was Queen of the L.A. County Fair in 1960.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nThe 14 contestants were interviewed by a panel of judges drawn from the television and radio industry. \u201cWe had lunch with all those people and were dressed to the nines, with hats and gloves,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd then we were interviewed one-on-one with the judges.\u201d She especially notes there was no swimsuit competition \u2013 \u201cThey judged the \u2018inner beauty\u2019 of the contestants to determine who would do best in interviews.\u201d\u00a0
\nThere was a special photographer assigned to the Fair Queen and her court, capturing on film all their promotional activities. There were plenty of photos of her and the princesses with farm animals, fruits and vegetables that represented the county\u2019s agriculture \u2013 and of course, there\u2019s one of Bushnell milking a cow.
\nThe Queen also graced the Fair\u2019s weekend parades, riding in an open carriage drawn by four beautiful horses, with liveried horsemen at the reins. The court rode in convertible cars preceeding the Queen\u2019s coach. Though there is no queen and court now, parades still march through the Fair each day.
\nHer poise as Fair spokesperson may have led to her career teaching public speaking, along with physical education at Santa Maria High School, Torrance High School and South Torrance High School. She won a Fulbright Scholarship and taught at Bramalea Secondary School near Toronto, Canada.
\n
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Carolyn Bushnell at her 70th birthday party.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nToday Bushnell does analytical research for commercial real estate property. She was vice president of the U.S. commercial real estate division for Home Savings, was appointed by President Bill Clinton to the National Advisory Council for The Small Business Association on which she served for six years, and is listed in Who\u2019s Who of International Professional Businesswomen, Who\u2019s Who of American Women <\/em>and Who\u2019s Who of Women.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sept. 1 is particularly significant to Carolyn Bushnell of Glendora. First, it\u2019s her birthday; second, it was the day she was crowned Queen of the L.A. County Fair in 1960. Her sister Barbara, named Miss San Gabriel Valley that summer, was also a princess in her court. Bushnell was crowned by then-California Governor Pat Brown.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funatthefair"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.fairplex.com\/blog\/fairblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.fairplex.com\/blog\/fairblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.fairplex.com\/blog\/fairblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.fairplex.com\/blog\/fairblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.fairplex.com\/blog\/fairblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.fairplex.com\/blog\/fairblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2071\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.fairplex.com\/blog\/fairblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.fairplex.com\/blog\/fairblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.fairplex.com\/blog\/fairblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}