Photo by Erin Nelson. Photo by Erin Nelson
Mary-Coker Green, 2023 Miss Hoover, stands in front of the lake at Aldridge Gardens on Friday, Sept. 16, 2022. Photo by Erin Nelson.
When Mary-Coker Green was growing up, some people labeled her as the “happy girl” because she always tended to respond to a lot of things in life with joy.
She didn’t like feeling sad, so she tended to suppress those kinds of emotions, she said.
When a tragedy came into her life during her senior year of high school, she faced some new realities that were hard to swallow and she had to relearn how to do life, she said. And now, the new Miss Hoover 2023, at age 19, is working to help others cope with trauma and stress.
Green, who once lived in Hoover but moved to Citronelle when she was in the eighth grade, was part of the Mobile Azalea Trail Maids (high school seniors who serve as ambassadors for the city of Mobile, much like the Hoover Belles do for Hoover). She was driving home to Citronelle from a Trail Maids appearance in October 2020 when she had a head-on collision that claimed the life of the man driving the other vehicle.
There was nothing she could do to avoid the accident, she said, and the man ended up dying on the scene.
“I was thrown into a world of trauma, anxiety and depression,” Green said.
Green said she was thankful she survived the crash, but she had trouble balancing that with the sadness she felt about the man who died, and she wasn’t accustomed to dealing with sadness.
Through counseling, she learned it was normal and OK to have conflicting emotions and learned how to better process those emotions in a healthy manner instead of suppressing them, she said. Now, she wants to help others do the same.
Photo courtesy of Melanie Posey/city of Hoover.
Miss Hoover 2022 Jordan Carraway crowns Mary-Coker Green, a 19-year-old Auburn University student from Citronelle, as Miss Hoover 2023 at the Hoover Library Theatre on Aug. 21, with assistance from Miss Alabama’s Outstanding Teen 2022 Hailey Adams, at right.
Dealing with trauma
She started a campaign called “Flip the Switch” to try to change the way people view mental illness and help people dealing with stress and trauma.
She has done presentations in schools to teach young people how to cultivate healthy mental and emotional habits, and she created “emotional activity sheets” that have been distributed nationally through the Boys and Girls Clubs of America.
Green also wrote a children’s book called “The Girl Who Grew a Garden,” which teaches children how to take the pain of losing someone or something they loved and use it to grow something beautiful. She uses the analogy of a beautiful sunflower that wilted and died but whose seeds were used to grow more sunflowers.
Green has volunteered at the Amelia Center in Birmingham, counseling little girls who have lost a sibling or parent and sharing with them what she has been learning through her grief process, she said.
Green also said she went through a late phase of insecurity after starting college and for a while doubted she was good enough to be who she wanted to be.
Last year, she was named Miss Shelby County and went on to compete in the Miss Alabama competition for the first time. She found herself surrounded by young women who were confident in themselves and for the first time began to feel like she was good enough, too, she said.
She realized it was OK not to be perfect all the time, and she thinks it’s important for people to be open about their shortcomings, she said. “People celebrate you for success but relate to you because of your struggles,” she said.
Hoover connections
Green started her life in Pensacola, but her family moved to Hoover when she was 8 so she could attend Hoover schools, she said. Both her parents worked from home and liked the Hoover school system, she said.
She attended South Shades Crest Elementary School and Brock’s Gap Intermediate School, and then she was homeschooled through Hope Christian School while in sixth and seventh grade. Her family then moved back to Citronelle to be closer to her grandparents, and she finished high school as a homeschooler through Moffett Road Christian School.
Green then went to Auburn University, where she now is a sophomore studying agricultural business and economics.
Her mother was raised on a cattle farm, and her father was raised on a fish farm and now runs his own cut-flower farm, with a heavy dose of sunflowers and zinnias.
She wants to go to law school and study agricultural law and policy, in order to eventually be a voice for farmers in the shaping of government policies related to agriculture and the environment, she said.
She’s particularly concerned that some climate-control legislation isn’t realistic for farmers, she said. For example, electric tractors are not really efficient for farmers, she said. She believes there needs to be more of a balance found between protecting the environment and helping farmers maintain their livelihood, she said.
Green was chosen as Miss Hoover 2023 from among 12 young women in a competition on Aug. 21. The Miss Hoover competition is an “open competition,” which means the contestants don’t have to live in the city.
Green said she is thrilled to become more associated with Hoover again and noted this was not her first time in a Hoover competition. She was the first runner-up in the Miss Hoover’s Outstanding Teen competition seven years ago.
She loved the time she spent living in Hoover and was upset when she had to move, she said. Before winning Miss Hoover in August, she already had reconnected with some of her old Hoover friends at Auburn, some of whom immediately called her by her childhood nickname: Coco.
She switched to the name Mary-Coker her junior year of high school, she said. It’s a combination of her great grandmothers’ names, Mary Nell Green and Verla Mae Coker.
Fiddle playing
When Green won the Miss Hoover competition this year, she performed “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” on the fiddle as her talent. It’s her favorite fiddle song to play, she said.
Green said she’s always had a natural inkling for playing music. She learned to play the piano at age 6 and, because her great grandfather was a well-known fiddle player in south Alabama, she decided to give the fiddle a try in the summer between fourth and fifth grade.
She tried a year of classical violin lessons and determined that wasn’t for her, so she switched to playing Irish, country and American fiddle music and enjoyed it much more, she said. She likes the way people get excited, clap their hands and stomp their feet in joy with that kind of music, she said.
Green had her first official event as Miss Hoover at the city’s 9/11 Remembrance Ceremony and has started making more appearances. She took part in a charity day at the Tidal Wave Auto Spa, was at the Taste of Hoover event at Aldridge Gardens and was emcee for the Little Miss Blackberry Pageant in Chilton County.
She said she is eager to keep reconnecting with people in Hoover while at the same time preparing for the Miss Alabama 2023 competition this coming summer.