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| Farm girl Miss Indiana candidate will promote handicapped awareness |
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| By ANN ALLEN
Indiana Correspondent
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Kelli Hoffman, the newly crowned Miss Purdue, didn’t blink an eye when asked to develop a platform she will promote as she moves into Miss Indiana competition in June.
“It will be HOW,” the 21-year-old agriculture major said, explaining the acronym stands for Handicapped is Only a Word. Her main goal is to create awareness of disabilities on Purdue’s campus.
“My sister Jodi is my inspiration,” she said. “She was born blind and needs a lot of help, but she’s taught me much, including the need not to take life for granted. She helps me understand how life can change in a split second.”
Jodi, the 1989 Easter Seal poster child, also inspired Hoffman to work with other special needs groups.
Using a packet of material from the Indiana Governor’s Council for People with Disabilities, she visits public school classrooms where she blindfolds children or takes their arms out of their sleeves. “It gives them a feeling for what life is like for the handicapped,” she said.
After breaking her foot, she learned firsthand how it feels to be handicapped when she competed in the Huntington County 4-H queen contest with her foot in a cast and using crutches. In spite of that, she was runner-up.
Hoffman is unafraid of any challenge. Asked to form a team to raise money for Special Olympics, she drafted her mother and some friends to help her pull a Boeing 747.
“Pulling that plane wasn’t all that difficult,” she said with the same nonchalance she uses to describe baling hay or driving in demolition derbies.
Hoffman gre |
| 4/18/2007 |
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