Sheri Dew remembers her first encounter with Sharlene Wells Hawkes.
"I was working at This People (magazine) and I went to do a story on her when she became Miss America," says Dew. "Believe me, the last thing I wanted to do was meet Miss America. I'd imagined she'd be a cute girl without a brain in her head."Dew was in for a surprise. The young Utahn was about to show the world she was a woman of intelligence and conviction, a firm believer in the power of example.
"She was articulate. She was active and athletic. She was bright and well-read and had lived all over the world -- a nice, diverse background," says Dew, now Deseret Book's vice president of publishing. "Even at what, 20? -- it was clear she was a multifaceted, multitalented person."
During the intervening 14 years -- between her tiara-crowned walk along the Atlantic City runway in September 1984 and her latest minimeasure of celebrity in a regional TV commercial in which she warbles "somethin' 'bout a Ford truck" -- Hawkes has nurtured a life and career that is, even more than most, a mosaic.
Pardon the hyphens, but she is today an author- composer- singer- spokesperson- speaker- journalist- wife- and- mother.
The last two are vital, indeed dominant, components.
"I have a 'mommy-track' career," Hawkes says with a chuckle. "You do whatever you can while you're focusing on your kids."
Many a mom would love to have even one of Hawkes' still-accumulating accomplishments on her resume.
Her first inspirational album, "When All Will Believe," was released in 1994; an ambitious second CD, "Song of the Morning Stars," came out in 1996. Her first book, "Living In, but Not of, the World," was published by Deseret Book a year later. She remains an occasional free-lance broadcaster for ESPN, the sports network for which she once worked, and is a busy motivational speaker.
The unifying thread through these projects is not only Sharlene Wells Hawkes but her personal history. The cliche is for your career to become your life; for Hawkes, her life is her career.
Anecdotes and the people she's loved and met over the years pepper her book and personalize her motivational speeches, which urge those in her mostly corporate audiences to persistently expand their horizons, testing and pushing their assumed limits and comfort zones.
Hawkes is living proof of that philosophy.
As a child, she was a tomboy, Hawkes says. She was sports-crazed and wanted to grow up to be a veterinarian. Her father, Robert E. Wells, now an LDS general authority emeritus, called her "Charlie," she writes in "Living In, but Not of, the World," her autobiographical guide and code for other Latter-day Saints. As a teen, she was basically a "jeans and sneakers" sort of girl.
Nor was young Sharlene inclined toward public speaking and entertaining, though she loved music, singing and playing the harp and piano.
"In fact, I never thought of myself as a performer," Hawkes says. "I always felt so uncomfortable. Speaking or getting in front of people was not something I enjoyed." The very thought of doing so "turned my legs to noodles."
Not, perhaps, what you'd expect of a blossoming Miss America, let alone a multihyphenate career woman.
Even today, she gets a little case of the nerves before a public engagement or certain television appearances. "Anything live," she says. "It's a mind game. You know a little red light (on a TV camera) is going to come on and millions of people are going to see you. I've been able to cover it up."
After her whirlwind yearlong reign, the former Miss America returned to Brigham Young University to continue working toward a degree in communications. There she met Robert A. Hawkes, a student in physical therapy. They married in 1987, settled in Centerville and are raising four children, Monica, 7; Nicole, 5; Sarah, 3; and Jacob, who just turned 1.
The range of her projects is a result of full-time motherhood as well as her drive to remain out there and active -- to continue to set goals and achieve them.
"It would be easy for me to focus in on just the kids," Hawkes says. "But I know me -- that I'd go stir-crazy." So she writes when she can and makes short airline hops around the West for quick speaking engagements. "I'm back on the plane before they hardly notice I'm gone.
"I'm developing my talents and skills," she says, "and that makes me a better mom, I think."
She's been a songwriter since about age 14, and two of her recent productions are musical albums.
The first came about "because I was taking voice lessons again, after my first daughter was born," Hawkes says. "After about two years, a voice teacher said, 'I want you to keep writing songs.' Then, 'Why don't you produce a couple of these?' Then people who produced them said, 'Why not sing in one of the LDS concerts?' "
"She simply has a gift for melody," says Clive Romney, a Utah composer and record producer. "Melodies pour out of her, though she labors over the words."
Romney produced "Song of the Morning Stars," a choral and orchestral work that begins with the Creation and moves forward from there, charting a course through the Judeo-Christian experience. It was a grand project, involving a half-dozen arrangers, multiple soloists (including Hawkes and her sisters Elayne Wells Harmer and Janet Wells Gunson) and a 75-voice choir.
The large cast was propelled by Hawkes' own passion for the project, Romney says. Mention her name and others are magnetically drawn to participate.
"People are enthusiastic because Sharlene is enthusiastic," he says. "She just carries that spirit with her and infuses it into everybody else."
What's up next?
Two books are in progress.
"One is about pushing the limits of your comfort zone, a basic how-to," Hawkes says. As in her motivational talks, she will be focusing on overcoming stage fright and developing stage presence, "something I know a lot about. You would not believe the things I do to cover up my fears."
Another is a family book of memories and standards. "It's kind of different, a takeoff on something my husband and I do," she says -- a tabulated treasury of special stories, favorite games, holiday traditions and photos but more than a scrapbook. "Whatever defines us as a family, it goes in there, and the children are an active part of the process."
When all of the kids are in school, she sees herself going back to school for a master's, maybe an MBA. Hawkes is fascinated by scriptural archaeology -- maybe she'll branch off in that direction. And she's always open to new books and albums and appearances.
She's prepared for the next opportunity.
"I want to be ready," says the former Miss America. "When the kids are all grown up, I don't want to just be sitting there. I want the engines running. I'm ready to go somewhere."