OSHKOSH, WI — Miss Wisconsin Grace Stanke of Wausau won the Miss America pageant in December. Her statewide tour included a visit to the Oshkosh Public Museum Sunday. She has competed in pageants since she was 17, which is when she envisioned going for the title. With that goal reached, she hopes to show other young women they can accomplish anything.
“It was more important to me to leave with no regrets. To know I gave it my all. And to know I was 100% me than to become Miss America,” Stanke says. “And I just got lucky that they really loved who I was and what I stand for as a nuclear engineering student, as a competitive water skier, as a violinist. Representing the women who can, for the people and the women who can in the Miss America organization.”
Stanke is studying nuclear engineering and hopes to use her “Miss America” reign to promote all forms of zero-carbon energy technologies including solar, wind, biomass and nuclear fission and fusion.
“I actually like to call it a nuclear by-product, ” Stanke says. “Because by the time the fuel is taken out of the plant at the end of its cycle, it still has 90 to 95 percent of its energy and possibility within it.”
Stanke is the third Wisconsin woman to become Miss America and the first to win the title in 50-years.
