Marilyn Elaine Van Derbur (born June 16, 1937) is the Miss Colorado 1957, 1958 Miss America pageant holder, author and motivational speaker. In 2011, she was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award. She founded the Survivor United Network (SUN), and authored Miss America By Day: Lessons Learned from Ultimate Betrayals and Unconditional Love, which spent 13 weeks on Colorado's top ten non-fiction bestsellers list and was awarded the Writer's Digest Most Inspirational Book award (first place) in 2003.
Video Marilyn Van Derbur
Biography
Marilyn Van Derbur was born on June 16, 1937 in Denver, Colorado. After being crowned Miss America in 1958, Marilyn returned to the University of Colorado and graduated with Phi Beta Kappa honors. After graduation, she moved to New York City where she was the television spokeswoman for AT&T's The Bell Telephone Hour and hosted ten shows of Candid Camera. In addition, she was the television hostess for The Miss America Pageant for five years. Together with Murray S. Hoffman, MD (President of the Colorado Heart Association) and Jerome Biffle (Olympic Gold Medalist) Marilyn helped establish one of the earliest programs to promote jogging for heart health.
She became a motivational speaker in her early 20s. By her mid 30s, Marilyn had been chosen "The Outstanding Woman Speaker in America."
When Marilyn was 53, a newspaper reporter learned she was an incest survivor, and the next morning it was a front page story in The Denver Post. Her millionaire, socially prominent father had sexually abused her from the ages of five to eighteen.
Within weeks, over 3,000 men and women came forward in the greater Denver area for help and support. Marilyn immediately founded an organization called SUN (Survivor United Network). She contributed to and raised tens of thousands of dollars. Up to 500 people came to SUN each week for 35 different support groups.
When People magazine put her picture on the cover, there was a national outpouring from survivors who turned to her for help and support. She opened the door for tens of thousands of sexual abuse survivors to also speak the words, many for the first time.
During the past 20 years, Marilyn has spoken in over 500 cities. She wrote a book, Miss America By Day, in which, using her experiences and research, she shares knowledge and insights on incest. It also received an international "media award" for the best-written book on dissociation by a professional association that networks internationally with top clinicians, educators and researchers. Miss America By Day won the Writer's Digest award. Of the 1,900 books entered into the national competition, it won first place in the "most inspirational book" category. It is in its seventh printing and is being used as a textbook in colleges in Social Work and Child Development classes.
Maps Marilyn Van Derbur
References
External links
- Marilyn Van Derbur official website
- Marilyn Van Derbur as People Magazine
- Miss America By Day: Lessons Learned from Ultimate Betrayals and Unconditional Love (Book)
- Colorado Women's Hall of Fame
Source of article : Wikipedia
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