Miss Garner crowned Miss North Carolina

UNC student is an activist in the fight against Lou Gehrig's disease, which killed two members of her family

RALEIGH -- Miss Garner is now Miss North Carolina and vows to continue her fight against Lou Gehrig's disease, the neurodegenerative disorder that claimed her grandfather and great-grandfather.

Amanda Lauren Watson, a rising UNC-Chapel Hill senior, beat 22 other contestants Saturday to clinch the Miss North Carolina title. She will take a year off from pursuing her bachelor's in music and master's in teaching to prepare for the Miss America pageant in Las Vegas in January.

For the past seven years, Watson, 21, has been active in the ALS Association's North Carolina chapter, named after Jim "Catfish" Hunter -- a professional baseball player and Hertford native who died from complications of Lou Gehrig's disease in 1999.

"I've been participating in walks, singing the national anthem and speaking at events," Watson said of her involvement in the organization since she was a teenager.

In recent years, Watson has taken on bigger roles. She traveled several times to Washington to lobby for a national ALS registry similar to the statewide listing North Carolina has. She met with Sens. Richard Burr and Elizabeth Dole and Congressman David Price and successfully pushed for $5 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Defense for a national ALS registry. The Department of Defense is interested in ALS research because military veterans have been shown to have increased risk of contracting the disease, Watson said.

Watson expressed excitement at the possibility of expanding ALS research being done at such institutions as Duke University, including techniques for prolonging the life of patients even if the disease can't be cured.

And, she said, registries provide "a great stepping stone in helping us to research the disease."

Watson, who is trained in opera, sang a classic gospel number "We Shall Behold Him" for the talent competition. She has not selected a new tune for the Miss America competition. Watson also won the state-level contest's Community Service Award in addition to taking home the crown and a $12,000 scholarship at Raleigh's Memorial Auditorium on Saturday night.