By Debbie Adams
The 2024 Vinton Dogwood Festival is scheduled for April 26 and 27. Over the next several
weeks, The Vinton Messenger will be looking back on past Dogwood Queens leading up to this
year’s festival and the crowning of a new queen. Miss Vinton Dogwood Festival 1993, Virginia
Trost Thornton, is featured this week.
In the early years of the Vinton Dogwood Festival, participating bands were asked to nominate a
princess and the Dogwood Queen was selected from those young women after interviews with a
panel of judges.
Later on, the festival became a preliminary to the Miss Virginia pageant, with competitions in
swimsuits and talent added to the judges’ interviews. Nowadays, the Dogwood Queen is chosen
from seniors at William Byrd High School nominated by the faculty and selected by judges.
Virginia Vanessa Trost, Miss Vinton Dogwood Festival 1993, participated during the years when
the festival was affiliated with the Miss Virginia Pageant.
Trost, the daughter of Randall and Della Trost of Forest, was 22 when she won the Vinton
pageant. She was not only the overall winner but won both the swimsuit and talent competitions.
She was crowned by the reigning queen, Kimberly White.
She was a student at Lynchburg College working towards her Bachelor of Science degree with
plans for a Master’s Degree in Chemical Engineering. She had studied piano for 14 years, voice
for two years, dance for four years, and taken two years of gymnastics. In the talent competition
she played piano and is said to have “dazzled the judges with Khachaturian’s ‘Tocatta in B Flat
Major.’”
In college, Trost had been named as an Outstanding Young Woman in America recipient and
nominated for the Barry M. Goldwater Academic Excellence award. She later entered the Miss
Virginia and Miss Maryland pageants.
There were six bands in the 1993 Dogwood Festival Parade, including the Virginia Tech Highty-
Tighties Regimental Band. Washington Redskin player Joe Jacoby was the grand marshal of the
parade that year. The Embers were the headliners for entertainment. Chris Keaton was serving as
president of the Dogwood Festival. Susan Teass (now festival secretary and coordinator of the
Dogwood Queen and Court) had been named as the pageant’s executive director.
Teass said at the time that Trost “was very easy to work with and will be an excellent
representative for Vinton.”
Trost says now that truly her best memory from the Vinton Dogwood Festival was Susan Teass –
“she was amazing.”
“My year as Miss Vinton Dogwood Festival was truly remarkable,” said Trost. “Vinton is known
to be community-minded and supportive of local festivities. My director and chaperone, Susan
Teass, was incredibly supportive and treated me like her own. We spent hours together preparing
for Miss Virginia and she made my year of community service most enjoyable. She is so lovely.
“The Dogwood Festival changed my life by providing a scholarship which I used to obtain a
degree in chemistry. Thereafter, I also completed my Juris Doctorate and am now an attorney in
Lynchburg.
“The Vinton Dogwood Festival and parade was so beautiful and a delight to be a part of.”
