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Jennifer just a happy easygoing girl, says mother
Newly crowned Miss Universe, Jennifer Hawkins, is just a happy, easygoing girl her mother Gail said on Wednesday.
Newly crowned Miss Universe, Jennifer Hawkins, is just a happy, easygoing girl who "loves a laugh," her mother Gail said on Wednesday.
Hawkins' mother and family friends watched in surprise as Hawkins, Miss Australia, was named Miss Universe 2004 in a two-hour pageant in Quito, Ecuador, watched by hundreds of millions of television viewers around the world.
Hawkins, a 20-year-old 5-foot-11-inch-tall (180-centimeter-tall) blonde with blue eyes, was chosen Tuesday night from among 80 beauty queens representing their respective countries.
"She's a happy, easygoing type of girl who loves a laugh and always has time for people," her mother Gail said from the family home in Newcastle, in northern New South Wales state. "She's a natural, very Australian type of girl. She's very well liked." Hawkins, a model and cheerleader for her town's local rugby league team, kept her Miss Universe ambitions quiet. "No one even knew that she was in it, that she'd been in the competition," said Karen Godbee, events manager for the Newcastle Knights. "We all found out from the television." Godbee said Hawkins was still cheering for the Knights at a game in April this year, and the club would welcome her back once she's finished her duties as Miss Universe.
"If she still wants it, of course!" Godbee said.
Hawkins was still very close to her family, her mother said, traveling to Newcastle from the Sydney beachside suburb of Bondi almost every weekend for the last six months since she left home. "But she now has to go to America for a year so I have mixed emotions about that," Gail Hawkins said.
