Winners in Dogwood Essay Contest

I had the great pleasure of being chosen to be one of the judges in the Dogwoods Trail Maids essay contest.

This program is headed by JoAnn Broadus, through the Optimists Club of Fairhope, Alabama.

This year's winner and two honorable mentions were announced at the pageant in January.


In addition to entering the Fairhope Essay contest, the young women were also encouraged to enter the Daphne contest. This was also open to all students in the area.

We attended that event at the Daphne Civic Center (on a rainy, stormy night) where they chose the winner. Although it should have been, it was really not surprising when a current member of the 2015 Dogwood court, Meghan, won. They are all very talented young women.

The coincidence of it was that her sister, Emily, won the Fairhope contest, and she was also chosen to be on the 2016 Dogwood court.
In fact, all thee winners of the Fairhope Optimist Essay Contest were subsequently chosen to be 2016 Dogwood Trail Maids.

Congratulations to all.

But all was not well with JoAnn and me.

When we attended the Daphne ceremony, they gave the winner and two runners up medals - a gold, bronze and silver.

Wow! They were beautiful medals.

I immediately thought we needed to do that, and JoAnn did also. We ordered the medals straight away.

We decided to present them yesterday at the breakfast for the incoming Dogwood Trail Maids, and after that I felt pretty good.

 John O'Melveny Woods with Hannah Smith, Emily McCrory and

Madilyn Warner

Next year, we will present the medals at the pageant.

That should be pretty spectacular.

Again, congratulations to the amazingly talented young women who entered the contest and to those that won.

John O'Melveny Woods can be reached through his web site: