Meredith Howard

Meredith Howard, born Florence Meredith Howard on September 6, 1909, in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, was a performer, Miss America contestant, writer, and broadcaster who died on June 19, 1996, at the age of 86. The daughter of Samuel J. and Florence Howard, she grew up alongside three siblings: William, Mary, and her twin sister, Virginia.

Howard and her twin sister Virginia tied for first place at the 1927 Miss Tulsa beauty pageant. A coin toss determined that Meredith would advance to the 1928 Miss America pageant, where she finished as a runner-up. Following that competition, she spent five years as a performer with the Ziegfeld Follies, during which time her Broadway career took shape. Between 1928 and 1933, she appeared in four Broadway musicals: Whoopee!, Smiles, Pardon My English, and Hold Your Horses.

In 1935, Howard joined Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in Hollywood, California, working as a model and in the studio's public relations department. She subsequently moved to Washington, D.C., where from 1937 to 1941 she worked in the advertising department of Crowell-Collier publishing. Alongside that role, she authored two syndicated columns — Selective Tuning, written under the pen name Jean Abbey, and At Random, which covered Washington social life and women's fashion.

At the outset of World War II, Howard joined the Hecht Broadcasting Company, where she broadcast the third inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940 and hosted a radio program called News and Personalities in the News. During the war years she also contributed to civilian efforts, selling war bonds and participating in the Civilian Defense Home Hospitality Committee, the Russian War Relief Committee, and the Stage-Door Canteen. She was a co-founder of the United Nations Club in December 1941.

Howard relocated to Arizona following her marriage to Arizona Congressman Richard F. Harless on November 28, 1948, in Alexandria, Virginia. In Phoenix, she worked at KTAR radio and, in 1949, served as producer and commentator on A Look Behind the News for CBS Radio. She also appeared on Arizona Close-Ups for NBC and Arizona Caravan for ABC. In 1950, she resigned from her position as public relations director for KPHO-TV to support her husband's campaign for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. That same year she was named Arizona's Outstanding Woman, an honor she received in 1951. Also in 1949, she and Ellsworth M. Statler purchased a 504-acre thoroughbred horse ranch from Louis B. Mayer for one million dollars.

Beyond her broadcasting and political work, Howard served as national vice president of the Salvation Army and remained active in charitable and community organizations until her death. Her personal life included an earlier marriage to coach Albert Spurlock in 1928, which was later annulled, and a subsequent marriage in 1934 to Albert Russell Erskine Jr., son of the former Studebaker president, from whom she was divorced in 1937, before her final marriage to Congressman Harless in 1948.