Fiesta Days is making history yet again by celebrating 50 years of La Cañada Flintridge’s Spanish heritage and, in a nod to local lore, the Miss LCF Royal Court program.
This year, queens and princesses from 1973 to the present will be honored as the Grand Marshals.
Secretary and Royal Court adviser Katherine Markgraf initially came up with the idea to honor the past and present royals for this year’s Golden Jubilee during the pandemic, when many events were cancelled for the 2020 court to attend.
“The 2020 Royal Court had such an awe-inspiring attitude through all of COVID and kept looking for ways to serve their community,” Markgraf said. “While I was thinking of their efforts, I began to think about how past courts served and it suddenly occurred to me that we had almost 50 years of royal courts, with no breaks.”
Markgraf mentioned the idea to her mother, President and CEO of the LCF Chamber of Commerce Pat Anderson, who loved the idea.
The chamber is looking forward to seeing at least 31 queens and princesses participate in the parade on Memorial Day.
The first car in the parade will feature the first LCF Royal Court queen — from 1973 — Susan LeFevre Crossan, and current Queen Hannah Kiang.
When the pandemic reached California in 2020, not all the former queens and princesses were able to have a parade or participate in the many community events.
“During COVID lockdowns and school closure, Queens Allison Rayer (2020) and Katharine Franklin (2021) and their courts served our city with creativity and distinction, in an incredibly difficult time,” Markgraf said.
Crowned in late January of 2020, Rayer didn’t know what was in store for the year. At first, Rayer and her court thought the festivities and events would only be on hold for two weeks, but “we kind of realized that it was going to be more of a long-term issue.”
The creativity to give the 2020 court the year they deserved started with the help of Markgraf, Anderson and local businesses to conduct a drive-thru pancake day or community-wide Zoom meetings.
“We kind of had to be creative in figuring out how we could raise that [scholarship] money in a socially distant way where a lot of people couldn’t gather together at one time,” Rayer said.
“So, it was pretty neat to be able to be a part of such a community-wide effort and also to have so much of La Cañada behind us as a royal court in what was a really difficult year.”
Rayer decided to try out for the LCF Royal Court after going to a lot of community events and living in the LCF for all her life.
“When I heard about the Miss La Cañada scholarship program, it was really for me, less about the scholarship and the resume and more just about being able to be a representative of and give back to the city that I loved so much,” Rayer said.
Her court consisted of girls she had known since preschool, so “it really kind of ended up being a full circle moment going into my senior year with the court that I was chosen to be with,” she added.
Now, she is excited and honored to be part of the queens and princesses that will be attending the Golden Jubilee, something she has been looking forward to for the past three years.
“I’m really excited to meet other Miss La Cañada court members throughout the years,” Rayer said. “I think we all probably have had very different experiences on the court, even just from year to year. But also, as the program has grown and changed, I think it’ll be really neat to learn and see where the Miss La Cañada’s of the past have gone and where they’re going.”
She was able to take the skills she learned from being on the court — like public speaking — and apply that to college in her various clubs or the scholarship program she is in.
Franklin, who was the queen in 2021, also had a taste of the pandemic affecting her year on the LCF Royal Court.
“Katherine Markgraf really made sure that we had an equal opportunity that all other courts did. I think we still did about the same number of events, and they made sure that we got out into the community, and we got to leave our impact,” said Franklin, who grew up in LCF as well and tried out for the LCF Royal Court with her friends.
“Katherine Markgraf was also in a previous court, so it’ll be fun to meet the princesses alongside her. I’m really looking forward to it. I think it’s going to be a blast,” Franklin said.
Cindy Carava was a princess in LCF for the 1983 court, but didn’t think she would make it through the application process due to acute shyness in high school.
“Being a very, very shy girl all through high school at La Cañada High and having a skin condition called psoriasis. At the time that I tried out, I was pretty much covered head to toe with psoriasis patches,” Carava said.
Being in the program, she noted, gave her the confidence she needed to succeed in life as a real estate agent.
“I am just beyond grateful for [the program],” Carava said. “It really did give me the confidence to succeed in life and helped me see myself not as my skin ailment, but as a smart young lady. It gave me the confidence to run for [Pasadena] Rose Queen, and to talk to this very cute boy that would end up being my boyfriend and then now my husband.”
She is excited to be honored at the upcoming Fiesta Days to connect with old friends and make some new ones. The memories she holds dear include some old newspaper clippings and a broken trophy, which she has reconstructed.
Janet Jacobs, who was the queen on the LCF Royal Court in 1977, can remember almost every detail from her year on the court.
“I put in the application. Now, at that time, there were judges that were not from town,” Jacobs said. “They were, I don’t know who they were, but they were from outside the city. Didn’t know anyone, and you had to prepare a speech. You had to memorize and get up and give a speech, and the theme of the speech in 1977 was ‘I enjoy being a girl.’”
Jacobs tried out in her senior year of high school and was the fifth queen for the LCF Royal Court. There were 25-30 girls trying out and Jacobs was ready.
“I had been in drama class, so I wasn’t really that afraid of memorization,” Jacobs said.
Then her sister, Marilyn Bednar, tried out and became part of the 1982 LCF Royal Court as a princess. The tradition continued and recently, Jacobs’s daughter Michelle Winze became the queen in 2000.
“La Cañada is in my blood and, in fact, I’m living in the house I grew up in,” Jacobs said. “My children were born and raised here, so it meant a lot to me to have my daughter be chosen as well, of her own accord.”
Jacobs, Bednar and Winze will be participating in the Memorial Day parade to symbolize the legacy and tradition in their family.
Jacobs has also been able to observe the changes in tradition, differences in try-outs between her year, and that of her sister and daughter.
When the LCF Royal Court had just begun back in 1973, the girls who tried out only had to deliver a speech of about five minutes long, according to Markgraf. Toward the 1990s, meanwhile, the program’s official name changed to Miss La Cañada Flintridge, with the goal that a queen would go on to the Miss California Pageant. The court had a shift in numbers from a queen and two princesses in the late ’90s to a queen and four princesses in 2003, but Markgraf isn’t sure as to why there was a variation in size of the court.
“Since the early 2000s, the applicants have a first-round interview, with five judges; if selected, the applicant has a second-round interview with the five judges and they need to have a prepared speech that lasts up to three minutes,” Markgraf said.
In recent years the judges include Markgraf, a city representative — such as the city manager or mayor, the chamber of commerce chairman of the Board, and LCF business owners.
The three-day, event-packed celebration of Fiesta Days will be planned similarly to past years, with a French toast breakfast, vintage car show, fireworks and a parade. Queens and princesses from every decade will be present at the festivities.
First published in the May 25 issue of the Outlook Valley Sun
