Miss Colorado and Army Spc. Maura Spence-Carroll will skip an upcoming deployment to Iraq in order to compete for the Miss America crown.
“I volunteered and then my unit said ‘No you’re going to have to go to Miss America’ – this is before I was Miss Colorado… so they didn’t put me on the manifest,” the active duty specialist shared with Fox News in a piece published Friday. (RELATED: Miss America Camille Schrier To Become First To Hold Crown For Two Years Due To Coronavirus)
“I said ‘I will extend through the deployment,'” she added. “You join because you want to do this. I’m hoping that when I’m in the reserves next year… that I can get a deployment or two under my belt.”
Maura Spence-Carroll was the first active-duty Soldier to be crowned Miss Colorado She will be representing Colorado in the 2021 Miss America Pageant #GoArmy #MissAmerica2021 #SheCanDoBoth @PaulFunk2 pic.twitter.com/ifnrmhTDcA
— U.S. Army TRADOC (@TRADOC) July 6, 2021
Spence-Carroll is an intelligence analyst with the 2nd Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 4th Infantry Division stationed at Fort Carson near Colorado Springs, Fox reported. She was crowned Miss Colorado 2021 after competing in beauty pageants for years. But instead of getting ready to head overseas, she will help others get ready for their deployment and remain at home in preparation for the December contest being held in Connecticut. (RELATED: Miss America Stops The Swimsuit Contest, And Won’t Judge On Physical Appearance)
Maura joined the Army in 2018 after one semester of college. As Miss Colorado, she says her focus is addressing mental health among the military and veteran community.
“We need to really address mental health now and show the new generations of soldiers that are coming through that mental health care is something we don’t make a big deal about and that we don’t think of it as being scary,” Spence-Carroll shared. “It’s just a thing we take care of.”
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She says her passion comes from dealing with the loss of her younger sister, who died at age 5 when she fell off a dock and drowned. She said she not only wants to help keep soldiers from committing suicide, but also to provide help for family members because the loss of a loved one “never leaves you.”
“I kind of had an epiphany when I started talking about how to stop service members from committing suicide is that we’re not just trying to help the service members themselves but I don’t want their family members to have to experience loss. It never leaves you,” she shared. “It’s heavy on your shoulders for the rest of your life. I watched how my mother suffered.”