By Bill Kirby Jr.

Community news editor

Brooke Elizabeth McLaurin is a striking 23-year-old with deep blue eyes and dimples in her cheeks.

She is the 2005 Miss Fayetteville, our 49th queen, who will represent this city in the Miss North Carolina Scholarship Pageant scheduled for June in Raleigh.

‘‘Obviously,” she says of her coronation, ‘‘I was ecstatic. It is a lifelong dream.”

But Brooke McLaurin understands that this time-honored title is far more than riding on the back of a shiny automobile in a Fourth of July parade.

‘‘A lot of people think of a beauty queen as a pretty girl with a crown on her head,’’ she says. ‘‘Miss Fayetteville has the opportunity to promote our city. An opportunity to travel across the state and tell people what a wonderful place this is to live.’’

She plans to do just that, while bringing awareness to Von Hippel-Lindau syndrome, a disease that forms knotted capillaries in the body, resulting in cysts and tumors. She knows the disease. She underwent two surgeries to remove a benign brain tumor, one in March of 2003, a second in January.

Brooke McLaurin is a country girl who grew up in a two-story home along Middle Road eating chicken ’n’ pastry, field peas, fried okra, butter beans and corn bread.

‘‘Everything that’s fattening,’’ she says.

Her daddy is a retired cookie salesman, who wept when she was crowned. Her mother, a former Miss Methodist College, works for the local district attorney’s office in the victim’s assistance program.

The Miss Fayetteville Scholarship Pageant has lost some of its luster over the years. Partly, perhaps, because of the proliferation of pseudo ‘‘beauty’’ pageant competitions -- small and large -- that breed for their own financial gain on doting, naive and overzealous parents, i.e. Little Miss This ..., Little Miss That ..., Miss Baby This ..., Miss Baby That, etc.

Although she was introduced to pageants at age 4, Brooke McLaurin acknowledges that children with waxed eyebrows and bouffant hairdos is a growing concern in the pageant industry.

And cast some of the lost appeal on local and state pageant officials who have not emphasized community awareness. As Ericka Dunlap, the reigning Miss America, is obligated to be versed on national issues, Miss North Carolina should be versed on her state and Miss Fayetteville knowledgeable of the community she serves. She should be an educated voice in this city and county, addressing everything from civic pride to community issues.

‘‘I plan to do that,’’ Brooke McLaurin says.

It will be a star in her crown.