Powerful Women Still Seek Crown

O vernight, Deanna Bunch had become a new person. She smiles wide recalling that day. It was the Monday after this year’s televised Lilac Parade, and she was walking through the halls of Roosevelt Elementary. “Everyone was like, ‘There she is! We saw you, we saw you!’” Over the school’s loudspeaker, kids and teachers were told to stop by Bunch’s classroom to greet her. Up there on the parade float, she had heard the voices of so many people she knew screaming her name. Her friends yelled “Deanna!” Small voices squealed “Mrs. Bunch!” Suddenly, the second- and third-grade teacher wasn’t just Mrs. Bunch anymore. She was something more — a princess, a queen — wearing a sparkly diamond tiara and a silk sash as the official Mrs. Spokane. Bunch, a 39-year-old wife and mother of two, says that she never would have considered competing in a beauty pageant as a younger woman. But after the last couple of years — marked by struggle and worry — something about becoming the next Mrs. Spokane, maybe the next Mrs. Washington, made sense to her/Leah Sottile, Pacific Northwest Inlander. More here. (Inlander photo)

Question: Have you ever been crowned queen or princess? Tell us about it?