Miss America, an Air Force lieutenant, shares inspiring story with Hinson Middle students

DAYTONA BEACH — Mia Fancher, an eighth-grader at David C. Hinson Middle School, has participated in Advancement Via Individual Determination for three years.

AVID provides students with advanced academic and college readiness support, according to the district.

“We’ve had a whole bunch of guests (and) featured speakers come in and talk to us about future career plans,” Fancher said. “They do a lot of team-building and collaboration with each other on learning how to work together as a big family and a big team.”

Fancher’s favorite guest speaker was Madison Marsh, who visited the school Friday while she was in town for the Daytona 500.

“We got to find out a lot of cool things on responsibility and future career paths,” Fancher said.

She appreciated that Marsh talked about balancing her accomplishments even while she suffered losses.

Marsh was crowned Miss America 2024 and Miss Colorado 2023. She is a graduate of the United States Air Force Academy and Harvard Kennedy School, a second lieutenant in the United States Air Force, and the first active-duty Air Force officer to receive the Miss America title.

Marsh also co-founded the Whitney Marsh Foundation in honor of her mother who died of pancreatic cancer when Marsh was 17. The foundation hosts a 5K and 10K race each year which aims to raise funds and awareness for pancreatic cancer while honoring Marsh’s mother through one of her greatest passions: running.

When visiting Hinson Middle School Friday, Marsh led students in a question-and-answer style discussion. Students asked if she was scared to fly a plane for the first time (Answer: Yes), if she likes being Miss America (Answer: Yes), and if she has any hidden talents (Answer: Not sure).

But through their interactive discussion, Marsh gave students advice on navigating grief, balancing numerous responsibilities, and keeping an open mind.

“I got to talk to some of the amazing young students about the difficulties of life and being able to overcome them so you can achieve anything and not being able to limit yourself," Marsh said.

Persevering through change and loss

As part of her introduction, Marsh told students that experiencing her mom’s death and moving across the country by herself soon after was one of the most challenging points in her life.

“It was really, really difficult starting college and starting the military right after that huge loss and kind of trying to navigate that environment of what grief looks like and being able to persevere through it to become something that was bigger than a loss,” she told students.

But about two weeks after her mom passed away, the Marsh family started the Whitney Marsh Foundation, an outlet that has allowed them to turn a tragic event into something positive for others.

The foundation started out raising money for the MD Anderson Cancer Center, where Marsh’s mom received treatment. But over the years, it has grown to also support low-income individuals in need of testing as well as high-risk individuals in need of early cancer detection.

“I wanted to remember who my mom was, and kind of the light that she brought to things that she loved and not necessarily about the bad stuff,” Marsh said.

Balancing numerous passions with grace

Marsh talked to AVID students about time management, speaking from her experience of simultaneously being a cadet, studying physics, running a nonprofit and competing in Miss America.

“Those were a lot of things that were pulling me in different directions,” she said. “But I think a skill that you all can kind of take from now is this idea of prioritizing the things that you care about in life.”

Marsh knew that she cared about all four of her passions and that she could only do everything if she also made time to replenish herself.

“It’s great to work hard, but it’s not great to work so hard that you want to give up and you can’t do any more work because that doesn’t help anybody, and that doesn’t help you further in your future,” Marsh said. “A big thing that I had to learn was ‘How am I going to balance all these things and also give time back to me?’ Because giving time back to yourself is what’s going to make you go far.”

Marsh told Hinson Middle School students that the stereotypes of being a woman in uniform and a woman competing in pageants doesn’t bother her. But what does matter to Marsh is proving to others that she can do both at once — that serving her country doesn’t take away from her ability to be Miss America, and vice versa.

“They’re both about service, about leading my country in two very different ways, about being able to speak to our next generation and get them excited about the opportunities that our country has,” she said.

Welcoming change

Marsh first talked about keeping an open mind when she told students about competing Miss America's talent portion.

“I cannot sing or dance or anything like that, so I took a different spin on it,” she said. “I gave a monologue on my very first solo flight as a pilot at the age of 16.”

But throughout their conversation, Marsh also inspired students to listen to themselves and welcome new passions as their interests evolve.

“For a long time, I’d wanted to be an astronaut, and now I’m kind of changing paths because my passions have changed,” she said. “And it was really difficult, you know, being a college student, letting go of dreams that I’d had over nine years, and it took a while and a bit of soul searching to realize it’s OK for things to change, for your plans to change, for your life to change because you should never be wasting any of the precious moments that you have on things that you don’t love.”

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Miss America 2024 Madison Marsh inspires students at Florida school