Playmate of the Month April 1970 - Barbara Hillary

"I get stale if I stay too long in one place," says Playmate Barbara Hillary. "In fact, it really doesn't do me any good to just go from city to city; I need to keep changing the total character of my surroundings to feel challenged." Milwaukee-born Barbara has followed her nomadic impulses far and ...frequently in her 21 years, sampling everything from the urban sophistication of Manhattan to the frontier rigors of Alaska. "I don't feel the split between country and city the way some people do," says Miss April. "I find something I like in just about every environment." Part of the lure of New York was her job as a Bunny at our hutch there. "I loved it. It's great experience for a young girl; I got to know all kinds of people - girls I worked with and customers I served - and I learned a lot from them." Like many of the Club Bunnies, Barbara also did some free-lance modeling and acting, appearing in a number of television commercials and one full-length A.T. & T. documentary film. After nine months, she left for Florida and a more leisurely life style. Our sunny Miss April found her destination - St. Petersburg - warm and relaxed, full of all those diversions eulogized in the airline ads. "I love the sea. I guess I love it the way poets do, for its mystery. That's what I dug about Florida, the beauty of the sea, the solitude of a quiet beach." After the Midwest, New York and St. Pete, our pioneer Playmate decided to investigate the last frontier - Alaska. "I first went up there to visit my sister and her husband, who live in Juneau - right on the Gastineau Channel - and I liked it so much I stayed and worked for a few months as a camp counselor. I've been back a couple of times since then. I'm like the natives, who have a difficult time explaining why they love the place to skeptical outsiders. It may be cold, remote and primitive, but I think it's great. It's clean and wild; you really feel like you're on the edge of civilization, where things are a little dangerous. I was chased by a bear once at camp; that's really more excitement than I need, but it makes a good story." Back in the more prosaic confines of Milwaukee, Barbara intends to return to Alaska. Readers will certainly agree that she would make a bounteous addition to the already abundant resources of the 49th state.

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