From the World?s Fair of 1939 to last week?s Market Night in St. George?s, Miss Bermuda 1939 has lived a full life.

Dorothea Steele, believed to be the very first Miss Bermuda, was in attendance along with several hundred others when Market Nights opened last week.

Mrs. Steele ? who was Miss Swainson when she was crowned ? was encouraged to enter the Island?s National Beauty Pageant in 1939. She was 18 years old.

Sixty-five years later, Mrs. Steele recalled that the pageant took place at the Belmont Manor Hotel. For the competition, the 20-odd contestants were required to parade around the edge of the hotel swimming pool in their finest swimming costumes.

Surprised to hear herself announced the winner, Mrs. Steele, the daughter of Edgar Swainson, was awarded a silver cup.

The former Mount Saint Agnes, Bermuda High School for Girls and St. George?s Grammar School student was also awarded the Grand Prize ? an all-expense paid trip to the World?s Fair in New York City.

On the eve of the Second World War, the World?s Fair of 1939 presented such wonders to the world as television, a General Motors model of the future (what transportation would be like in 1960), and devices for measuring the thickness of hair. It even proved to be the inspiration for Walt Disney to create Disney World.

The theme of the fair was the future.

Remembering, Mrs. Steele said she had a splendid time visiting the exhibits and seeing the sites with her accompanying chaperones.

In her youth, Mrs. Steele lived with her family at ?Downing? along Wellington Slip Road.

Now 83 and a mother of eight, she has spent most of her adult life living in England.

She returns home to Bermuda regularly to visit with family and friends.