Former Miss Michigan Teen achieves dream of serving country in Air Force

For former Dowagiac grad Elizabeth Topping, the lessons she learned as a teenage contestant in beauty pageants across the state and nation have served her well into adulthood — including her current job as an officer in the U.S. Air Force.

In June, Topping graduated at the top of her training class at Maxwell Air Force Base in Atlanta, officially becoming a commissioned officer in the armed services. In doing so, she finally accomplished a goal she had set her sights on since middle school, she said.

“This has been dream for so long,” Topping said. “To wake up every morning and put this uniform on — I’m finally doing what I’ve wanted to do for the past 10 years.”

A third-generation member of the armed forces, both of Topping’s parents, Patti and Roy Kolden, served in the U.S. Army. Topping was actually born on base, while her mother was stationed overseas in Korea. She spent the next eight years traveling around the U.S. before her mother’s retirement from the armed services.

“At the time, I didn’t realize the impact it had on me, but looking back, it’s formed me into the person I grew up to be,” Topping said. “You recognize people as people, you don’t see race as something to judge someone by.”

After her discharge from the Army, she and her older brother, Alex, moved to Dowagiac with their mother, where she grew up. Growing up with her grandparents right around the corner, Topping enjoyed the change of pace that spending time in a small town without the fear of being uprooted by her mother’s deployment.

“I really got to know everyone in a good way,” she said. “I never saw that as negative, the fact that everyone knows you in town.”

However, Topping’s name and face would soon be known by people outside of her hometown. During her freshman year at Dowagiac Union High School, she received an invitation to compete in her first statewide beauty pageant, Miss Teen of Michigan.

Although she initially hesitant to accept the invitation, she eventually decided to give it a go, becoming one of 100 contestants vying for the crown.

“It opened my eyes to what pageants are about compared to the commercialized ideals most people have of them,” she said.

She went to compete in competitions throughout the next several years, winning the American Coed Miss Michigan Teen award in 2008 and Miss Heart of Blossomtime in 2011. She even competed on the national stage, finishing in the top five at the National American pageant in 2011, held in Anaheim, California.

For Topping, the competitions helped her in a number of important ways, bolstering her public speaking skills and giving her the confidence to step outside her comfort zone.

“It showed me that I had the potential to help people’s lives,” she said. “You can really make an impact on younger girls, and be a positive role model for them,” she said.

After graduating from high school in 2009, Topping studied religion and political science at Central Michigan University, with her goal of joining the Air Force in the back of her mind the whole time. In 2013, she married her high school sweetheart, Forrest, who is currently serving as a platoon leader in the Army, stationed at Fort Riley in Kansas.

Topping is currently stationed at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida, where she is serving as Commander’s Executive Assistant. She is expecting to receive a new assignment in December, when her training officially wraps up.

While she hasn’t had time this past year to visit her family and friends back in Dowagiac, she said that she continues to keep them in her mind as she continues to soar in her career.

“I want to thank my family, and my mom in particular, for helping me to become who I am, and making all this possible,” she said. “And I want to thank my husband, who has supported me 100 percent, allowing me to be the person I am today.”