As we all know, the Miss America Organization is one that embraces women from past, present, and future, and Anna Mae Schoonver is quite possibly one of the last people alive who participated in the earlier generations of Miss America.

Anna Mae was born in Seattle on February 9, 1917, and grew up during the depression. She moved with her family to a farm in eastern Washington to survive the depression years where she picked strawberries with her mother and sold them at a penny a basket. She claims that hard times like those made her strong and practical and were the inspiration for a book she wrote later in life call Picking Up Pennies. At 95, she's still a hard-worker, up every morning at 7 a.m., industrious, does her own driving, cooking, and cleaning, and makes time every day to read The Wall Street Journal cover to cover.

Anna Mae–who later shortened her name to Ann–won her first pageant in 1938, and then went on to compete for Miss Washington–and won again. After a summer of appearances as Miss Washington, Ann went to Atlantic City. She won the talent contest with a dramatic reading. She won the bathing suit contest. And she came in as second runner-up in the Miss America contest. At the time, she was engaged to James Clough Danly, and when advised during the competition to remove her engagement ring, she refused. She married James in November of 1939, spent her honeymoon in Hawaii, and moved to Chicago where they raised eight children.

Ann had offers from modeling agencies and film studios, but it wasn't until her last child was in high school, that she visited modeling agencies in Chicago and became very busy in her 60s as a model in print and media, taking on age-appropriate roles as a grandmother, a country-club socialite, and advocate of health and beauty products for mature women.

When James retired, he and Ann moved to Naples, Florida, where Ann got busy in another calling, writing. She wrote two novels and a non-fiction book on thrift called Picking Up Pennies. The books were sold at local CVS pharmacies and Amazon.

Ann is in excellent health. Her husband passed away in 2005, and she says she counts her blessings everyday that she married that wonderful man and had sixty-six "blissful" years with him.

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