From Dawn to dusk and coast to coast, we staged a transcontinental romance with thousands of beautiful women. In Tampa's Bay Harbor Inn, Detroit's Omni, New York's Doral Tuscany, the Union Square in San Francisco, the Delta Place in Vancouver and Hyatt Regencies from sea to sea, phones rang, cameras clicked and women undressed for photographers Kerry Morris, Pompeo Posar, David Mecey and David Chan. The Hunt for Playboy's 35th Anniversary Playmate was on. Husbands and boyfriends, barred from the scene sublime, stewed in hotel bars many floors below. "Some of the boyfriends were cranking a few drinks," said Miss September 1978, Rosanne Katon, who joined the Hunt's staff in New York. As their men fidgeted downstairs, the hopeful prey of the Playmate Hunt posed and dreamed other dreams. "I've dreamed of being in Playboy since I was a baby sitter," said Vancouver's Valerie Gulyban. "I wouldn't take my clothes off for any other magazine," said Clearwater, Florida's, Pam Ward. Perhaps Terry VanWinkle of Lenexa, Kansas, put it best: "I have fantasized about Playboy since my teens. I think every girl wonders, dreams and wishes she could be in Playboy just once--it's as much an American institution as baseball and Mom's apple pie!" The Hunt attracted women from all 50 states and a sizable fraction of the rest of the globe. There were 17 flight attendants, 16 nurses, 15 strippers, two nannies and a beekeeper. There were doctors, cops, a mortician, a psychic and a cowgirl. From Honolulu came Honey Bruce Friedman, Lenny Bruce's widow. There was a minister, a witch and an acrobat. Four thousand, three hundred and two women later, we had our 35th Anniversary Playmate. You will find her lurking modestly in the next few pages. Good hunting and Happy Anniversary.
