Venus Ramey

Venus Ramey in 2007

Venus Ramey (b. September 26, 1924, Ashland, Kentucky) left Kentucky to work for the war effort in Washington, DC and won the Miss District of Columbia pageant and then became Miss America in 1944. She was the first red-haired contestant to win the title.

Ramey worked during her reign to help win suffrage for Washington D.C. in 1945. Later, she became the first Miss America to run for public office, seeking a seat in the Kentucky House of Representatives. She was wooed by Hollywood in 1947, but, dissatisfied with show business, she returned home to her Eubank, Kentucky tobacco farm (which she has maintained for over fifty years) in Pulaski County, Kentucky. She married and raised two sons.

In the 1970s, Ramey successfully campaigned to save Over-the-Rhine, a neighborhood in Ohio. The neighborhood was eventually listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and her work led her to make an unsuccessful bid for a spot on the Cincinnati City Council.

In April 2007, Ramey confronted intruders who had entered a storage building on her farm where thieves had previously stolen equipment. She used a snub-nose .38 revolver to shoot out the tires on their pickup truck, then flagged down a car and had the driver call 911, holding the would-be-thieves until the sheriff arrived. "I didn't even think twice. I just went and did it", she said. "If they'd even dared come close to me, they'd be six feet under by now."

In 1944 a B17 of the 15th Air Force, 396th bomb group was named the Venus Ramey. This plane is reputed to be one of the longest lived B17's of the war having flown over 150 missions and survived the war. It was later scrapped.