Former Miss Uniontown revisits 1950s in memoir
Placeda “Plus” Conteen Hall, former Miss Uniontown, has published a memoir celebrating what she calls “one of the most prominent decades of my life.”
“Miss Uniontown 1951: No Regrets? No Regrets!” features original love letters, newspaper clippings and photographs that chronicle Hall’s romance with Rudi Maugeri of 1950s doo-wop quartet the Crew-Cuts as well as her journey to becoming second runner-up to Miss Pennsylvania after her senior year at North Union Township High School in 1951.
“I always loved the ’50s, and my daughters were tired of hearing me say, ‘If you had only lived in the ’50s!'” Hall said. “I thought it was a great era. When the decade started, I wrote in my journal that this was going to be ‘my decade’. And the whole 10 years was pretty darn special.”
In her memoir, Hall relates how high-profile her relationship was with Maugeri, a member of the Crew-Cuts, who performed with the group on popular television programs such as the “Ed Sullivan Show” and the “Perry Como Show.” Their romance and eventual engagement brought Hall much attention, resulting in her giving many interviews and autographs of her own as well as traveling often to see Maugeri throughout the group’s nonstop touring. But Maugeri suddenly broke off their relationship in April 1955, two months before their wedding, to marry someone else, which resulted in a media blitz of unwanted publicity against her.
“The bad experience of all the publicity was a growing-up experience, so I don’t look at anything from (the ’50s) as being bad.”
Because of her prior stint as Miss Uniontown, though, Hall was no stranger to publicity.
“(Being Miss Uniontown) was a very big deal,” she said. “The newspapers in Uniontown and Pittsburgh covered it. They didn’t have Miss Universe or little kids with tiaras back then. I was a local, small-town celebrity, but that fame also followed me into Pittsburgh.”
Hall attributes much of the romantic nature of her ill-fated relationship with Maugeri to that era’s more intimate communication methods.
“People today don’t write letters,” she said. “Gals don’t get love letters, they get emails, text messages, etc. Maybe it’s the stress or the pace of the world today, but I feel (in the ’50s) people were kinder and more thoughtful then, and that’s why I like that era so much.”
The recent discovery of the memoir’s many love letters and newspaper clippings prompted Hall to write the book.
“I had some ladies come over and they were having me clean out the attic and I had them bringing out stuff,” Hall said. “They brought out this very big suitcase that was old and blue. I realized it was my mother’s because I had to rush to her house, clean things out and get it ready to sell after she and my stepfather died in the ’70s. I opened it up and found all these letters and pictures and newspaper clippings that I didn’t know existed and that’s what pushed me to write the book.”
“Miss Uniontown 1951: No Regrets? No Regrets!” is Hall’s first published book.
“I wrote this all on legal pads,” she said. “My daughter did all the typing for me. If I would be out or in my car I’d write something on a scrap of paper or on the back of an envelope, a back of a napkin, and then I’d hand this stack of things to my daughter to type and she’d look at me like, ‘What is this?'”
Hall, who had a long career in nursing after graduating from the Allegheny General Hospital School of Nursing in Pittsburgh in 1954, now lives in West Hartford, Conn., and Naples, Fla.
“Nobody in the state of Connecticut except my husband and my best friend knew about the Crew-Cuts, so it will be something when people read this book. Only three of my best girlfriends have read the book so far. They thought they had lived a pretty special life, but after reading the book, they thought that mine was even more so.”
Initially, Hall planned to use the rediscovered letters and articles for a scrapbook album before her daughter convinced her to write a book.
“If I didn’t get it published, what I was going to do was have six copies printed for my children and my godchildren because they didn’t know about the Crew-Cuts or that engagement,” Hall said. “I really wrote it for them.”
To purchase a copy of the memoir, visit online at Amazon.com or Barnes&Noble.com.