In 1976, Josseline “Jossie” Mangin was learning to be humble, independent and hardworking.
The daughter of Jeanne Mangin, a French immigrant, and U.S. Air Force Senior Master Sergeant Melvyn Mangin, who was deployed in Thailand at the time, was already working as an 18-year-old Centralia College student.
She was paying rent for her own apartment on top of a car loan.
“I was working two jobs at VIP’s as a waitress in Chehalis and in Olympia as a nurse’s aide at Panorama Convalescent & Rehabilitation Center,” Josseline recalled.
Because of her humble disposition, she said she had to be talked into entering the Miss Lewis County pageant by a friend.
Ultimately, the choice to enter the pageant was a decision that would help shape the rest of her life.
But at the start, Josseline just wanted to dance.
Aside from walking the runway and modeling a dress, she would perform a dance she choreographed herself for the talent competition. She would also model a swimsuit — which the shy teenager wasn’t exactly excited about in light of what she considered to be revealing swimsuits.
Eventually, she was ready for the pageant.
Ultimately, she won the crown and was named Miss Lewis County 1976 for the nation’s bicentennial.
Fifty years later, she said she didn’t know the winner of Miss Lewis County would be obligated to compete in the Miss Washington pageant. The news came much to her chagrin.
To her memory, that wasn’t the only disappointing outcome of what was otherwise a resounding personal success story.
After Josseline was crowned Miss Lewis County, she said most members of the now-defunct local Chehalis Jaycees club, who were supposed to help her prepare for the Miss Washington pageant, never showed up.
Feeling almost completely on her own ahead of the Miss Washington pageant, Josseline said she believes the reason most of the Jaycees abandoned her after her win was that she wasn’t their preferred contestant that year.
At the time, the Jaycees were responsible for organizing the pageant and finding judges. While the Chehalis Jaycees might have had their preferred pageant winners in mind, they were required to hire judges unaffiliated with their club who were not bound by the preferences of the Jaycees.
The pageant was held on May 15, 1976, and the theme was simply “Memories.”
Josseline was the first woman of color to win the Miss Lewis County pageant, and though she didn’t know it at that time, she now believes her race might have played a role in the Jaycees leaving her without much support for the Miss Washington pageant.
She said she didn’t want her ethnicity to be the main story behind her Miss Lewis County win, but two days after winning, the front page of The Chronicle on Monday, May 17, 1976, included her photo with the headline “French-Indian girl wins county crown.”
While she said most of the Jaycees disappeared after she won the local title, those who didn’t included Dennis Geiger and his wife, Laura, who died in 1991.
Dennis was one of 13 board members for the Jaycees.
“There was another couple too, I can’t remember their name, but they were in and out when Laura and Dennis couldn’t be there,” Josseline said. “They would do it, but you could tell they really didn’t want to be there.”
Additionally, Josseline was due to receive a scholarship as Miss Lewis County 1976, but said she only got $100 in scholarship money and did not receive any financial help in running for Miss Washington.
The Chronicle met with Josseline earlier this year at her home in Poulsbo as she was attempting to reach locals in Lewis County about attending the unearthing of a bicentennial time capsule she participated in burying as Miss Lewis County 1976.
For this report, The Chronicle relied on Josseline’s memory and the newspaper’s archives, along with other sources that provide a window into events that occurred half a century ago.
Of important note: Today’s Miss Lewis County Scholarship Program has no connection to that of the 1970s pageants. The Chehalis Jaycees are no longer active, and the modern program is run independently by volunteers.
The Jaycees who stayed
Dennis Geiger, who still lives in Lewis County, corroborated much of Josseline’s recollections in an interview with The Chronicle this past summer.
Dennis is a U.S. Army armored cavalry veteran and a member of the American Legion Grant Hodge Post 17 in Centralia who has also previously been featured in The Chronicle for his volunteer work with the Lewis County Food Bank Coalition.
Back in 1976, he said he was only involved with the pageant because of his wife’s interest, as she was a pageant judge.
He tagged along to help run the spotlight for the shows, along with setting up stage sets with other volunteers.
Although Josseline says she doesn’t believe her skin color played a central role in most of the Jaycees leaving, Dennis stated some pageant organizers were commenting on her skin color as soon as she stepped on stage.
“When they had all the gals up there, people were talking around, going, ‘Oh my god, we got a Black gal running.’ I said, ‘What’s wrong with that?’ ‘Well this is Lewis County.’ I go, ‘So?,'” Dennis recalled. “They went on, ‘My god, what happens if she wins?’ I thought, ‘Jesus Christ, what are you guys, a bunch of rednecks or something?’ Now I didn’t tell them that, but she won, and it was all, ‘Who’s going to help her do what (for the Miss Washington pageant)?’ They all sorta backed off.”
The only one who didn’t leave “Jossie,” as he still calls her, was Laura, who used her pageant judge experience to coach Josseline to compete for the Miss Washington crown.
“She knew a lot of the things they were looking for. It’s not just what you look like — it’s how you talk, how you answer questions,” Dennis said. “And the questions, they were off the wall. You gotta know what’s going on in the world, because if you win there, you go on to Miss America … The wife worked with her quite steadily and got her prepared for the Miss Washington pageant. Everybody down here, they sort of just frowned and kept away from Jossie, because that’s how they were.”
Despite Dennis’s recollection of potential racism, Josseline still believes any other contestant who might’ve won that year besides the pageant’s favored candidate — regardless of skin color — would have received similar treatment.
The other contestants were Lori Nanney, Kathi Reynolds, Ann Hull, Julie Hadaller, Jackie Meadors, Teri Hirtzel, Patti Radmaker, Debi Smith and Debbie Steele.
Whatever the case may be, Dennis still maintains Josseline was treated unfairly.
He added The Chronicle’s own coverage of Miss Lewis County 1976 wasn’t anywhere as in depth as it was for previous pageant winners.
“They should’ve treated her like Miss Lewis County, but they didn’t,” he said.
For example, in the Southwest Washington Fair preview guide published for the previous year’s fair on Monday, July 28, 1975, Miss Lewis County 1975 Wendy Whatley is mentioned eight separate times, including specific days and times where fairgoers could see her at certain events and attractions.
In the 1976 fair guide published in The Chronicle on Monday, July 12, 1976, Josseline is mentioned only once, simply as the “official SWW Fair hostess.”
In the end, though, Dennis said Josseline never let the situation bring her down.
“She was really sort of a kick in the head. She didn’t play the role of ‘Oh my God, they’re all against me.’ She was still bright and everything else,” Dennis recalled.
And though she didn’t win the Miss Washington pageant, Dennis and Laura were still proud of her performance.
“Even though she didn’t make it, Jossie represented Lewis County just great down there, no matter what anybody says,” he said.
After the Miss Washington pageant, Pierce County pageant organizers approached her about continuing to compete in pageants — including a gentleman claiming he could make Josseline the next Miss Washington — but she said she respectfully declined.
Despite the decisions of the Jaycees and The Chronicle’s editorial staff at the time, Josseline said she doesn’t harbor any ill will toward anyone.
“During the time I was Miss Lewis County, it was such an honor,” she said earlier this year. “I started at 18 and I thought it was about the crown. But looking back, it was about learning confidence, poise and learning how to carry myself with grace. Those lessons stayed with me long after the sash was taken off.”
Five decades after her pageant triumph, Josseline began reaching out to locals late last year with a specific inquiry, leading to an interview with The Chronicle at her home in Poulsbo.
She was hoping to attend the unearthing of a bicentennial time capsule she participated in burying as Miss Lewis County 1976.
A time capsule lost to time?
With 1976 being America’s birthday bicentennial, many across the country were burying time capsules for future generations to dig up. It wasn’t dissimilar to this year, when the nation’s 250th birthday was celebrated with time capsules at Centralia College, in Mossyrock and elsewhere across the state and country.
In Lewis County in 1976, Josseline was invited to take part in the burial of a time capsule she was told would be unearthed for the nation’s 250th birthday this year.
“I didn’t even know what a time capsule was, and they were like, ‘In 50 years, we’ll be opening it,’ and I was like, ‘OK.’ When you’re that young, you think after 50 years you’ll be dead,” Josseline said.
She was invited to put something in the time capsule. At 68, she was looking forward to opening it, because she couldn’t remember what item she included.
However, in the archives for The Chronicle that year, no mention was made of the burial of a 50-year time capsule. What was reported, though, was a time capsule buried on Flag Day in 1976 at Chehalis City Hall “beneath the Liberty Bell” by the Chehalis Bicentennial Committee, to be opened 25 years later on Flag Day in 2001.
Both the Little Miss Friendly for that year, Nani Jackins, and 1976 Lewis County Dairy Princess Barbara Rothlin were listed as present at the capsule’s burial. Though Josseline believes she was present, she was neither mentioned by name or pictured for the article.
Other prominent figures listed as being present for the time capsule’s burial were Chehalis City Councilor Joyce Venemon, Lewis County Commissioner Bob Jacobsen and members of the Chehalis Chamber of Commerce, with an additional “175 people sitting on the sloping lawn in front of city hall.”
For the story itself, an 8-year-old Chehalis boy named Doug Ruth was featured in a photo watching the capsule burial. He was also named in the headline, which read “The Dougs of this world will inherit time capsule.” The news package was published on the front page of the Tuesday, June 15, 1976, edition of The Chronicle.
Ruth was invited and featured when the capsule was unearthed 25 years later, according to the Friday, June 15, 2001, edition of The Chronicle, but Josseline said no one reached out to her.
Aside from multiple retail advertisements selling time capsules throughout that year, the only other local time capsule mentioned in The Chronicle’s archives in 1976 was one specific to Bucoda, which was to be buried during a “bicentennial reunion-picnic” with Bucoda Mayor Neil Corcoran at Bucoda Volunteer Park on June 25 of that year, according to the Wednesday, June 21, 1976, edition of The Chronicle.
The Chronicle reached out to the current executive director of the Miss Lewis County Scholarship Program, Cindy Godsey, and Jerry Owens, a stalwart supporter and organizer of the Southwest Washington Fair and other local events, to learn if there was another time capsule buried in 1976 due to be unearthed.
Neither Owens nor Godsey knew of any such capsule, and there are no plans to bury another for America250.
Though he isn’t involved in the modern Miss Lewis County Scholarship Program, Owens was a catalyst in bringing back the Miss Lewis County pageant after it was canceled in 1977.
Owens was featured in a Saturday, Oct. 1, 1977, article in The Chronicle featuring the return of the Miss Lewis County pageant in 1978 after he was elected by the local Jaycees to be the new executive director of the pageant.
It was only two months earlier when the Chehalis Jaycees announced they were “reorganizing in an effort to rebuild leadership within the chapter and renew efforts on several projects,” including the Miss Lewis County pageant, according to the Wednesday, Aug. 17, 1977 edition of The Chronicle.
Again, Josseline’s name and her status as the reigning Miss Lewis County were not included in the article.
While she was featured on the cover of The Chronicle’s 1976 Southwest Washington Fair guide, published in the Monday, July 12, 1976 edition of The Chronicle — as Miss Lewis County is typically the official fair hostess each year — she was not invited to host again in 1977 despite being the reigning Miss Lewis County.
In the Monday, July 11, 1977, edition of The Chronicle, it was stated “because there was no Miss Lewis County pageant this spring, fair officials turned to other royalty to officiate the 1977 fair. Selected for official hostess duties was Lewis County Dairy Princess Donna Allison.”
In the Monday, May 19, 1977, edition of The Chronicle, Josseline was mentioned as Miss Lewis County in an article announcing the cancellation of that year’s pageant.
According to the pageant’s former executive director at the time, the reason for the cancellation was that they were still trying to find a new director.
“In addition, right now the pageant is broke, except for the scholarship fund,” the director told The Chronicle at the time.
This was the same scholarship fund Josseline got $100 from.
Despite the perception that she was treated unfairly by both the Jaycees and The Chronicle, Josseline said she is thankful for being Miss Lewis County 1976, as the confidence, poise and grace she learned while competing helped her through other challenges throughout the rest of her life.
Those included a divorce from prominent Kitsap County businessman Daniel Sluys after a 20-year marriage, one that ultimately ended with allegations of infidelity and criminal sexual behavior.
In 2012, after their divorce, Daniel was formally charged with first-degree child molestation according to a Jan. 5, 2012, Kitsap Sun article, which specified he was “accused of inappropriately touching a girl he knows when she was 3 or 4 years old.”
The charges were dropped about a month later, according to an Kitsap Sun article on Feb. 6, 2012.
Daniel’s brother, Albert Sluys, was also charged with sex crimes against children according to an Oct. 20, 2020 story in The Bellingham Herald. Albert pleaded guilty to three counts of second-degree child molestation in 2023 and is now in prison, serving a six-and-a-half year sentence, according to Whatcom County Superior Court documents.
There was upheaval throughout the divorce and in subsequent years.
Josseline persevered through challenges that included fighting for the home she helped build and custody of her children following her divorce.
Though she didn’t know it at the beginning of her marriage, looking back on the last 50 years, she said the confidence, poise, grace and independence she learned while being Miss Lewis County 1976 helped push her through difficult periods in her life.
“So much has changed, but what hasn’t changed is the importance of kindness, community and believing in myself,” she said. “Titles fade, but character doesn’t.”
Now remarried as the mother of four adult children, there is a lot more of her story still to be told, Josseline told The Chronicle.
A retired mental health counselor, she and her current husband of eight years are searching for a writer to assist in publishing a book to tell her family’s story.
Original Source: The Daily Chronicle
