Miss America Betty Cantrell’s parents come home to Warner Robins

After a surreal weekend of parades, parties and pageantry on their daughter’s path to Miss America, Mike and Tassie Cantrell returned home late Tuesday night.

A giant electronic billboard of Betty Cantrell being crowned was one of the first things her father and 15-year-old sister, Sophia, saw driving into Peach County on Interstate 75.

“It just blows my mind,” Mike Cantrell said Wednesday as he was settling back to work at the Cantrell Center in Warner Robins.

He knew his daughter would be a contender, but has been surprised at how fast she’s catapulted into national fame and become a hometown hero.

“She’s obviously very confident in front of a camera,” he said. “She makes people want to be around her and she’s got that gift.”

Tassie Cantrell feels like she’s in a daze.

While the newly crowned Miss America took a 45-minute nap early Monday before tip-toeing barefoot through the Atlantic City surf in her first big public appearance, her mother was up all night trying to fit her daughter’s things into the two-and-a-half suitcases Miss America is allowed on the road.

Although the reality of her daughter’s celebrity is still sinking in, Tassie Cantrell knows Betty has the “it factor” that is hard to describe.

“Betty has this unique ability to make a stage seem small,” Tassie Cantrell said. “No matter how big the stage is, Betty will fill that.”

Before the pageant and knowing the pressures that lay ahead, she encouraged her daughter to give it her all.

Prayers from the family’s priest at Macon’s Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Church, Father John Stefero, helped calm both mother and daughter.

“She’s not nervous on stage,” Tassie Cantrell said. “That’s where she loves to be. She’s more confident on stage than anywhere else. The bigger, the better.”

Her father nicknamed her “60-decibel Betty” when she started singing as a little girl.

“She was so bloody loud,” he said. “She would hurt my mother’s ears, and she was hard of hearing.”

One of the things that makes him so proud as a physical therapist and nutritionist, is his daughter’s healthy children platform.

Congratulatory signs are up inside and outside the family’s fitness center on Osigian Boulevard.

It will be a little difficult keeping up with Betty now that she’ll be jet-setting across the country, about 20,000 miles a month.

Miss America hardly ever stays more than 36 hours in one city, her mother said.

But her parents are thrilled Betty will be sharing her talents and message across the country, and even parts of the world through the U.S.O.

“I always felt God wouldn’t give somebody a voice like that if he didn’t intend for her to use it. I just didn’t know how,” Tassie Cantrell said.

Her father will miss her, but doesn’t feel like he’s losing her to the world. They’re too close for that, he said.

“Being a stellar representative of the Miss America organization, they’ve got that in Betty,” he said.

To contact writer Liz Fabian, call 744-4303 and follow her on Twitter@liz_lines.

This story was originally published September 16, 2015 at 10:50 PM with the headline "Miss America Betty Cantrell’s parents come home to Warner Robins ."