WASHINGTON — One lazy, sultry afternoon in 1947, two years after America helped trounce the Nazis, my father arrived at our family’s modest summer house on the Severn River near the Naval Academy.

He had come from his job as a police detective in D.C., still wearing his suit and his service revolver.

“Get your shoes on and come with me,” he told my 10-year-old brother, Martin, his Irish lilt edged with a steel that caused his son to scramble. “I have something to do and I want you to see it.”

The town, Herald Harbor, Md., had its share of “old country hicks,” as Martin called them. It had been founded in 1924 by The Washington Herald, a newspaper owned by William Randolph Hearst. The Herald gave one of the first cottages to Margaret Gorman, a vivacious curly-haired 5-foot-1 Washington teenager who had gone to Atlantic City in 1921, sponsored by the paper, and won a beauty pageant. She was crowned “The Most Beautiful Bathing Girl in America” and awarded the Golden Mermaid trophy. The next year, she competed again and won a new title. She became the first Miss America.