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ABC To Profile Strawberry Festival Queen And Court

TBO.com photo by KEVIN BRADY

Lauren Der is crowned queen of the 2009 Florida Strawberry Queen pageant at Tomlin Middle School Jan. 17.

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By GEORGE H. NEWMAN | The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 24, 2009

PLANT CITY - The Florida Strawberry Festival queen and court have again drawn national attention and will be profiled on ABC.

In 2008, festival queen Kristen Smith and her court members were featured by The New Yorker magazine. The article was written by Anne Hull, a former Plant City resident and Pulitzer Prize-winning staff writer for The Washington Post.

This year, festival queen Lauren Der and court members — first maid Sara Beth Newsome, Megan Cochran, Joclyn Emerson and Morgan Feaster — are being profiled by "Good Morning America's" Saturday feature program in a bimonthly segment, "American Snapshot."

The Plant City spot is expected to run in late March or early April.

Queen and court coordinator Sandee Sytsma was notified of the "Good Morning America" interest in late January. The show's producers were inspired by Hull's article this summer in The New Yorker, which took a nostalgic look at the queen's pageant and Plant City, Sytsma said.

"The festival was put in touch with Jennifer Perone, a producer at ABC, and we e-mailed back and forth to set up the visit," Sytsma said.

Perone and the queen and court met over dinner Feb. 16 at the Red Rose Inn and Suites in Plant City.

"We took that opportunity to let the girls meet with Jennifer so they could get to know one another," Sytsma said. "Before long, they were like old friends."

The next day, Sytsma and Perone met with a freelance film crew out of Orlando to tape "points of interest" in Plant City, including strawberry fields, Parkesdale Farm Market and the downtown Camellia Rose Tea Room.

Later that day, Sytsma, Perone and the camera crew joined Juju Chang, a New York-based Emmy Award-winning correspondent for ABC News. They spent the rest of the day filming Der and her court members in their daily routines.

The crew plans to return during the Florida Strawberry Festival to get more footage of Der and her court members. The festival runs Thursday through March 8.

Reporter George H. Newman can be reached at (813) 865-4451.

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