Dorothy Kathleen Benham (born December 11, 1955) is an American beauty pageant titleholder from

Edina, Minnesota Edina ( ) is a city in Hennepin County, Minnesota, United States and a first-ring suburb of Minneapolis. The population was 53,494 at the 2020 census, making it the 18th most populous city in Minnesota. Edina began as a small farming and mil ...

who was

Miss America 1977 Miss America 1977, the 50th Miss America pageant, was held at the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey on September 11, 1976 on NBC Network. Pageant winner Dorothy Benham became a singer, appearing often on the Crystal Cathedral religio ...

and

Miss Minnesota The Miss Minnesota competition is the pageant that selects the representative for the state of Minnesota in the Miss America pageant. Women from Minnesota have won the Miss America crown on three occasions. The most recent winner was Gretchen ...

1976.

Early life

Benham was born to Archie and Mary Dorothy Tuomi Benham. She attended Southwest High School in Minneapolis, MN and graduated in 1973. She sang in her high school choir. She has one sister named Totiana and two brothers, named Sean and Archibald.

Personal life

On May 26, 1978, she married Russell Anderson, an American

ice hockey Ice hockey (or simply hockey) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an ice skating rink with lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. In ice hockey, two opposing teams use ice h ...

defenseman Defence or defense (in American English) in ice hockey is a player position that is primarily responsible for preventing the opposing team from scoring. They are often referred to as defencemen, D, D-men or blueliners (the latter a reference to ...

in the

NHL The National Hockey League (NHL; french: Ligue nationale de hockey—LNH, ) is a professional ice hockey league in North America comprising 32 teams—25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. It is considered to be the top ranked professional ...

who played for the

Pittsburgh Penguins The Pittsburgh Penguins (colloquially known as the Pens) are a professional ice hockey team based in Pittsburgh. They compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Metropolitan Division of the Eastern Conference, and have playe ...

. The couple had four children, Adam (born 1980), Russell (born 1982), Ben (born 1985), and Mia (born 1988). On December 31, 1991, she married Michael McGowan with whom she has two children, named Madeline (born 1994) and Richard (born 1995). On August 28, 2001, she married Paul Shoemaker. The couple divorced in 2011.

Career

Benham appeared in the Tony award-winning Broadway musical, ''

Jerome Robbins' Broadway ''Jerome Robbins' Broadway'' is an anthology comprising musical numbers from shows that were either directed or choreographed by Jerome Robbins. The shows represented include, for example, '' The King and I'', '' On the Town'' and ''West Side Stor ...

'' in 1989 and also performed on the

Crystal Cathedral Christ Cathedral (Latin: ''Cathedralis Christi''; Spanish: ''Catedral de Cristo''; Vietnamese: ''Nhà Thờ Chính Tòa Chúa Kitô''), formerly and informally known as the Crystal Cathedral, is an American church building of the Diocese of Or ...

television program, ''

Hour of Power ''Hour of Power'' is a weekly American Evangelist television program broadcast from Shepherd's Grove Presbyterian Church in Irvine, California, near Los Angeles. It is one of the most watched religious broadcasts in the world, seen by approximat ...

.''

References

External links

Miss America official websiteOur Family Tree Profile
{{DEFAULTSORT:Benham, Dorothy 1955 births Living people Miss America 1977 delegates Miss America Preliminary Talent winners Miss America winners People from Edina, Minnesota 20th-century American people Female models from Minnesota Actresses from Minnesota 21st-century American women