Venus Ramey

Venus Ramey addressing gun rights activists after being presented CCRKBA's Gun Rights Defender of the Month for June 2007

Venus Ramey (b. September 26, 1924, Ashland, Kentucky) was Miss America in 1944, and was the first red-haired contestant to win the title.

Ramey competed as Miss District of Columbia and 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, disgusted 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."

The resulting notoriety led to an appearance on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Asked how she had learned to use a gun, Ramey shot back, "I'm from Kentucky!" Leno then asked her opinion of President George W. Bush, to which she replied, "I think he's a spoiled-brat rich kid that needs a spanking."

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.