Venus Ramey became the first
Miss America
         to successfully run for public office,
seeking
a seat in the Kentucky House
                              of Representatives;

She was wooed by Hollywood in 1947,
but dissatisfied with show business,
returned home to her Eubank, Kentucky,
tobacco farm which she maintained
for over 50 years in Lincoln County,
Kentucky; She married & raised two sons,
Joseph H. "Hank" Murphy &
Martin W. "Wally" Murphy, who survive her

In the 1970s, Ramey successfully campaigned
to save Over-the-Rhine, a neighborhood
in Cincinnati, Ohio.   The neighborhood was
eventually listed on the National Register of Historic Places;

In April 2007, at age 82, Ramey confronted
intruders who had entered a storage building
on her Waynesburg, Kentucky farm where
thieves had previously stolen equipment.
She used a snub-nose .38 revolver to shoot
out the tires on their pickup truck, flagged
down a car and had the driver call 911,
holding the would-be thieves at gun-point
until the sheriff arrived. "I didn't even think twice.
I just went and did it", she said.
"If they'd even dared come close to me, they'd be six feet under now."

in 1944, a B-17 of the 15th Air Force,
301st bomb group was named the Venus Ramey.
This plane is reputed to be one of the longest-lived B-17s
of the war, having flown over 150 missions
and survived the war. It was later scrapped;

There was also a B-24 Liberator bomber
[42-52312] in the 454th bomb group named
MISS AMERICA '44 that flew 133 successful missions;

         Ramey died in an Agoura Hills,
California hospice near her son Hank
on June 17, 2017, age 92. Her funeral
was held at a Science Hill, Kentucky
funeral home on July 2, 2017 followed
by burial at the Eubank Cemetery
       in Lincoln County, Kentucky