Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League: “She became a treasure trove for the A.D.L. after that. She was beautiful, she was articulate, she understood what it meant being Jewish. Miss America was a much bigger thing back then than it is today, and she represented the promise of that contest and the reality that the country was still racist, anti-Semitic and bigoted. She had the guts and the courage to be a proud Jew and to stand up for it.”

Simon Lazarus, general counsel to Ms. Myerson at Consumer Affairs: “Right when she was appointed as commissioner, we got this invitation from the Better Business Bureau to speak. At that time, it was really the business establishment, and she gave this speech and said, ‘Your organization needs to come out and support tough regulation.’ She was really critical. Evidently, Mayor Lindsay was not happy. He was a fine mayor, but he really was socially a part of the New York City WASP establishment even though he was quite liberal.”

Sid Davidoff, administrative assistant to Mayor Lindsay: “She was very strong-willed, and very press savvy, and she would go off and do her own thing. For the mayor’s staff, it was always an issue because you’d get a call from a TV channel saying she was on the air giving a press conference in a supermarket and you had no advance notice about it. It was always happening. But to John Lindsay’s credit, he would say: ‘It’s Bess Myerson. What do you expect?’ ”

Henry Stern, deputy to Ms. Myerson at Consumer Affairs: “When we did things in the public interest, we just went and did them. She took advantage of her celebrity to expand the bounds of what a normal commissioner could do. She made enemies, but it worked. You couldn’t talk to Bess for five minutes without apologizing for something you’d done, and she obtained these apologies in the nicest way. It was a luxury she had as a beautiful woman who was strong in character. We went to Washington to testify once, so we rushed out to the airport. The plane had closed its doors and was starting to taxi down the runway and they turned it around for us and we got on the plane. I don’t know what she said or did to get them to do it. It never happened to me before and it certainly never happened since.”