Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Miss Arkansas Wows Students

There were some lucky young men Thursday, March 7.

Several students in Gurdon Middle and High school were called onstage during an assembly.

Normally, this can be a traumatic event, but not when it's a beautiful young woman doing the calling.

Miss Arkansas, Paula Montgomery, a Cabot native, was on hand to tell the students to be themselves.

While she told them to stay off drugs, alcohol and tobacco, Montgomery didn't preach the topic.

She did, however, give the students statistics on how many young people begin doing these things and how many die because of them.

According to Montgomery, 3,000 teenagers start smoking daily in the United States. "This isn't cool," she said. "It makes your teeth yellow, gives you bad breath and turns your lungs black. Smoking is neither sexy nor cool."

She reminded the students drinking alcoholic beverages before turning 21 is illegal in Arkansas. She also said six in 10 seniors in high school have been drunk at least once.

Montgomery told the students of a friend of hers to tried drinking one time. It killed him. She said her friend snuck into his parents' alcohol cabinet and got a bottle of vodka.

He started drinking, and wound up drinking until he died from alcohol poisoning.

She also informed her audience one in three high school seniors have used illegal drugs. These, too, she said, can kill.

Montgomery said crystal methamphetamines are the "new thing" going around in small towns.

This particular drug, she said, can make the user psychotic, and continued use can either kill the user or have them wind up institutionalized.

Montgomery told the audience she is not perfect, and, in fact, has had her legal problems as well.

When she was 19, Montgomery and some friends were stopped by a police officer. She was cited for public intoxication.

For the most part, this problem never came out -- until, that is, she was named Miss Arkansas.

She told students at GHS how she had been told it would be televised on the Little Rock news stations. She watched the programs and was relieved when the story didn't air.