5-year-old gets opportunity of lifetime at Miss Tennessee pageant
DOWNTOWN JACKSON, Tenn. — The Miss Tennessee pageant kicks off by crowning a very special little girl. Five-year-old Ema McLaughen fulfilled her dream of meeting a beauty queen, but ended up becoming one herself. Ema has hydrocephalus, a condition that causes fluid to gather on the brain. Her mom, Chara McLaughen, said the condition is unpredictable. “She’s had nine brain surgeries since she was 5 months old, there isn’t a cure,” Chara McLaughen said, “She’s had three surgeries of those nine in the last 5 weeks, so, you just never know. We live with that every day. We don’t konw what’s going to happen.” Chara is the chair of the Hydrocephalus walk in Chattanooga. That is how she met Miss Metropolitan, Darby Schumacher, who invited her to this week’s pageant. “If Ema’s up for it, if Ema’s healthy, why doesn’t she come? Then meet everyone,” Schumacher said. Ema, her mom and her grandmother made the 5-hour trip to Jackson, where she put on a dress just like Miss Tennessee 2013: Shelby Thompson. After Wednesday night’s preliminary competition, Ema got the surprise of a lifetime. She met Miss Tennessee for the first time, got to walk the stage, and received her own crown. “When you’re a princess, you can normally recognize other princesses, so I recognized she was a fellow princess right away,” Shelby Thompson said. If you would like to learn more about Ema’s journey, you can follow her mom’s blog here: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/emamclaughen/journal/view/id/539a6312af3d79114e5fe26d
