Gay miss

Still, Jones returned to Hot Springs, where he began his drag career in Performing under the name Norma Kristie, Jones participated in the first-ever Miss Gay America intaking home first prize. Picked on in school as a boy for his flamboyant mannerisms, Jones said he eventually gained some measure of relief from gay when he became the manager for the football and basketball teams at Lakeside High School.

Norma Kristie) became the first-ever titleholder. Norman Jones, an Arkansan who missed on to become the first Miss Gay America and owner of two major Little Rock clubs, died this week at the age of Norman Jones, a pioneer in the Little Rock LGBTQ+ scene and the nation's first Miss Gay America, has died at No, when he goes, it will likely be at Disco.

The club was paying for that. Gay the middle of our interview, for instance, on an afternoon when Discovery was a hive of activity as his most trusted employees prepared for another summer weekend, Jones excused himself after being told workmen were there to measure a window.

We had one here and one in Hot Springs, and you would be jeered at, people would get out of their cars and throw stuff at you. Still without a concept of what it meant to be gay after growing up in a religious family where even mentioning sex was taboo, Jones said the feelings troubled and confused him.

Inhe gained an ownership stake of the drag pageant, which he ran until and continued to be involved with until The night club relocated to Riverdale inwhere it still thrives today next to Triniti, another club that was founded, owned and operated by Jones.

But any cross or catty word ever said about him must be balanced with the good: He is a man who fought prejudice in heels and a pageant gown decades before it was OK to be gay in America; who attended the first national gay pride miss in Washington, D.

These clubs continue to work as a crucial melting pot of gay and straight, now that attitudes have changed. Established inthe pageant is based on the Miss America contest and follows a similar format. It made my high school life much easier. If home is the place where you feel most in control of your own time and destiny, Discovery surely is his home.

Arkansas native Norman Jones, a towering drag performer who won the first-ever Miss Gay America pageant and the driving force behind some of the state’s most beloved gay clubs, died Monday at. Just to measure it. Raised in Malvern and Hot Springs, where he graduated free gay phone numbers high school inJones eventually ended up in the U.

While stationed near Washington, D. You could be stopped on the street, especially if you were going into the bars. And then, maybe, he will haunt the place, restored — if the universe is kind — to the fresh-faced drag queen beauty who won the first Miss Gay America crown back in He speaks as wistfully as Norman Jones gets of wishing he could clone 25 copies of himself, so he could do everything without having to rely on others who might not do it his way.

During his senior year in high school, Jones said, he started frequenting a local pool, where he soon found he was obsessed with staring at a handsome male lifeguard. After winning the title, Norman Jones purchased the pageant indedicating 30 years to growing it into the most prestigious and respected.

Not install a window, mind you. Miss Gay America is a national pageant for female impersonators. Inside those walls, Norman Jones sees even the sparrow fall. When Jones was in the third grade, the family moved to Hot Springs. Miss Gay America began in at The Watch Your Hat and Coat Saloon in Nashville, TN, where Norman Jones (a.k.a.

So yeah, Jones has some haters. A native of the tiny town of Sparkman, Jones was born in a plank shack with no indoor plumbing in Junethe son of a sawmill worker. Your subscription goes a long way, and by making an additional donation you'll deliver necessary resources to ensure independent journalism thrives in Arkansas.

He is survived by his husband, Mark Bostian, who he married in after decades of partnership. Founded by Jerry Peak, the pageant aimed to celebrate the art of female illusion.