Twenty-four year ago when a sever-and-a-half pound bundle was placed in the arms of Myrna and Keith Cunningham –there was nothing to tell them that the newborn baby-girl squirming in their arms was destined to be a queen.
Her stars however had decreed it, and as the years went by, the baby christened Sandra Angela Cunningham grew and blossomed into a beauty whom friends relatives and casual acquaintances kept prompting to enter the Miss Jamaica World Contest when it came into being in 1978, and she was 20.
In the intervening years between 1978 and 1981, she never thought of entering because for her, entering a beauty contest was not classified as something constructive to do. She now realizes just how wrong she was.
“My idea of doing something constructive with my life was not entering a beauty contest. I thought they were so frivolous. A lot of people told me I was wrong but I couldn’t have realized just how wrong until my curiousity got the better of me, and I tried it,” the 1981 Miss Jamaica (World) winner said in a Sunday Magazine interview nine days after copping the prestigious crown, and cash prizes.
As it happened, only one of Sandra’s parents lived to hear the news of her queen-ship. Her mother died in 1979, and her father and three sisters migrated to the United States and were unable to attend the August 29 Coronation show and witness the crowning of their daughter and sister.
When they heard they were all very happy for me. They even said they knew I would win, but then family is always looking out for their own,” Sandra said with a smile.
Cosmetologist and secretary
Sandra was born at Victoria Jubilee Hospital, and was the first of four girls for a father who passionately wanted a son.
“My father always wanted to have a son, but the daughters just coming,” Sandra said, adding that as a child she used to feel that he would rather have a son. “When I said it to him, he would say that he was happy with his daughter”, she said. Not everyone is blessed with a happy childhood, but Sandra was lucky in this respect. She said that she was told that she was an easy baby to handle, and that she didn’t cry a lot. She was followed two-years later by Cheryl who is now married and living in Texas, with a daughter who is Sandra’s first and only niece so far. Three years after Cheryl, Jackie put in an appearance and she was followed by Joanne a year later. Both are now residing in Florida.
Wasn’t athletic
School days were a pleasure for Sandra who says that she can remember most of them. One of the things that come readily to mind is the memory that she didn’t like athletics. “I was never sports-minded,” she said, recalling that she thought that being a girl meant that she should be soft and becoming, and getting involved in sports never entered the picture at all.
She said that she was not unique in this thought, because most of the girls in her form thought the same way, and if it meant having a “period” three times a month, they would find a way not to get out on the playfield.
The girl who is now almost a fantastic where physical fitness is concerned laughs at how ridiculous that thinking was. What she now believes is a far cry from those uninformed school girl beliefs.
For the past four years, she has been a gym fan who has been through all the gyms in Kingston. The muscle and fitness magazine is a must for her so that she can keep abreast of what is going on in the world of physical fitness. She has been ‘gymming’ at Holborn Health Studio and Spartan Health Club and has had fit classes with Ella Davis. She even spent a few days at National Health Studio in the days when it just opened its doors for business, and didn’t have all its equipment and weights installed yet.
In the five years since leaving school and entering the world of work, Sandra has a lot of experience working as a secretary in an insurance company, and also working as a legal secretary with a law firm. In addition she has also owned and operated her own business, which she sold out when her family migrated, and she was not sure what she was doing.
The business was a beauty salon which she operated for just over a year with one assistant, and she found it very challenging and fulfilling. However when the pre-election violence and fear forced her family to leave the country, as thousands of other Jamaicans were doing at the time, she wasn’t sure that she could stay all alone here with her family gone, so she sold out the business and went back to being a secretary.
Her reluctance to leave Jamaica has turned out to be good for her. If she had left the country she would have missed the opportunity of wearing the Miss Jamaica World crown, and of representing her country in the Mecca Miss World Contest in London which is slated to be held next month.
“I am no longer undecided about staying,” Sandra said. “In fact, I am positive about staying, and besides being Miss Jamaica and all, I wouldn’t dare leave. To tell you the truth, I love Jamaica and I don’t think I could live anywhere else in the world.”
The brown-eyed beauty who joins a long tradition of beautiful Jamaican women who have worn the title and crown of Miss Jamaica is among the oldest to won the title and crown. Why did she wait so long to make the bid for the crown? The reason was tied up with her concept of beauty contests, and the fact that she never before felt inclined to enter, and she is glad she didn’t before.
“I am now better prepared – both physically and mentally,” she said, reiterating that she is glad that she waited until she was 24 to do it. Even with this, her entry in the 1981 contest was a last-minute one which only went in the day before the pre-eliminations, and two days before the elimination show which was held at the Kingston Inter-Continental Hotel.
“I began thinking about the contest a month before I entered, but I wasn’t sure I would do it because I was a bit overweight and didn’t know if I could trim down in time,” Sandra said.
Overweight for her at the time was 135 pounds. She is now fluctuating between 125 and 128 pounds, but he can remember tipping the scales at 145 pounds on more than one occasion. All this came about with her adult years. “I used to be quite thin when I was growing up,” she said.
Entering the contest has done a world of good for Sandra, and she is careful to let you know that she is not saying these things because she has won, and has sentimental feelings about it.
Some of the effects of the contest which she spoke glowingly about include the training in poise, speech, etiquette, posture and self-projection.
“I became more conscious of myself as a woman, and I learnt how to apply make-up and how to dress appropriately for an occasion,” she said, admitting that she knew so much about make-up, “but there was so much more to it,” she said.
Comfort and style
Sandra remembers that dressing up used to be something she hated, and that she would substitute comfort for style any day, but now she feels she has the expertise to do both, and do them well.
She also feels that the contest has made her a much more patient person than she was when she entered it. She said that she wasn’t impatient before, but that the contest helped her to make patience into a virtue. She said that they always had to be on the move and that there were so many things do and look about, that she wondered how she could have ever thought it was frivolous before.
“We girls had to work very hard to get in shape and get ready for the contest,” she said, adding that they all thought it was going to be all fun and had not bargained for the hard work.
We girls had to work hard at the gym, jogging our heads off, rehearsals, speech training, poise, posture and everything. It was really very hectic, but it was fun too, she said, noting that a lot of what they got out of the contest will be permanent.
Sandra is still trying to get used to the idea of being Miss Jamaica, and at the same time she is training very hard for the Miss World Contest which will be held early this year in October- a departure from the traditional November date.
She is now getting used to a new schedule which includes rising at 6:00 o’clock in the morning and jogging six laps around the field at the Police Officers Club without resting, and of course she is working hard at the gym to keep her muscles toned and in good condition for Miss World. She is on leave from her secretarial position at the Jamaica Bauxite Mining Company Limited until after the Miss World contest, and her greatest desire is to do Jamaica proud at the Miss World contest in London.
(Sandra went on to place 3rd in the Miss World Contest)
Source: Jennifer Ffrench article in The Sunday Gleaner
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