Carol Tuohy: Ms. Senior Sweetheart of America

Life isn't over when you hit age 60, says Carol Tuohy, who last year at age 67 was crowned Ms. Senior Sweetheart of America. "It's just beginning."

This philosophy has served Tuohy, a two-time cancer survivor, former Miss Senior Virgin Islands and community activist, well.

A New Jersey native, Tuohy competed in her first pageant at age 14, nearly made it into the Miss America competition in Atlantic City, and ended up earning enough from these contests to put a down payment on her first home. When an injury forced her husband, a professional truck driver, to look for other work, the two decided to pursue their dream of living on a tropical island.

"We were too young to retire and too old to learn another profession," says Tuohy, who looked at dive operations in St. Eustatius and Barbados with her husband before deciding on St. Thomas. Over the next five years, the Tuohy's operated safari buses for a dive company that took cruise ship visitors to Coki Beach.

Then, tragedy struck in 2000 and again in 2005, when Tuohy was diagnosed with breast cancer. A lumpectomy was ordered the first time, a mastectomy the second.

"I've always been a very feminine person and to take that away from me was devastating," she says. "I cried for three days straight and it wasn't getting me anywhere. So, I decided to do something productive. That was research."

Ultimately, Tuohy traveled to Philadelphia where she had found a father-son team of doctors that performed both surgery and reconstruction at once. The experience left her with a singular message.

"Life isn't over when you're diagnosed with cancer. It forces you to live because it forces you to confront your own mortality," she says. "I decided there were a whole lot more sunrises and sunsets I wanted to see, especially here in St. Thomas where they are so beautiful."

This fortitude, and the sheer fun and camaraderie of competition, is what Tuohy has always enjoyed about pageantry. She also loves being a title bearer.

"I love to wear a banner and crown," she says. "Believe it or not, I made 97 appearances in the year I was crowned Miss Senior Virgin Islands."

Tuohy now channels her gusto for life into a number of directions. She and her husband, Marty, work in the tourism industry for New Horizon Charters. Tuohy is also Queen Mother of the Caribbean Palm Bonnets chapter of the Red Hat Society, a social group for women over age 50. She's president of the Ms. VI Senior America Cameo Club, an organization dedicated to community works and lending support to the annual pageant. And, she's a member of the Middle Age Majorettes, who in the 2008 St. John Carnival parade danced to Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun."

"Life isn't measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away," says Tuohy. "To women my age, I say, put yourself out there and try something new. Some day, life will be over and so will that opportunity."