Kathy Tebow Sharp (born June 23, 1957) is from Anchorage, Alaska and competed in the 1977 Miss America Pageant. While serving as Miss Alaska, Tebow met U. S. Navy Chief Petty Officer Creig Sharp who escorted her to visiting Navy ships as part of her Bicentennial greeting duties. They later became engaged and set a wedding date for a couple weeks following the end of her Miss Alaska reign. Sharp had been transferred with the military to the Lower 48 states and returned to the state to see his fiancée finish her duties on the final pageant night. The next morning he left on a Kodiak brown bear hunt and was mauled four days into the trip. The couple were still wed on time two weeks later, although Sharp was released from the hospital on an overnight pass to attend in a wheelchair and underwent many more months of recovery. The harrowing account of the bear mauling was the cover story of Outdoor Life and Alaska, a scary tale in The National Enquirer, and part of several successful books about bears including Alaska Bear Tales by Larry Kanuit; and Bear Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance.
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