Doris Eaton Travis, Last Ziegfeld Girl and Norfolk Native Dies at 106

It is surprising at times to learn the names of some of the people who once called the Norfolk area home. They range from Gen Douglas MacArthur's mother, designer Perry Ellis, entertainers Wanda Sykes, Pearl Bailey, Ella Fitzgerald, Keely Smith, and Margaret Sullavan - and Doris Eaton Travis (pictured above). Some readers are likely saying who? Doris Eaton Travis died at 106 and the last of the surviving Ziegfeld Follies girls. The Ziegfeld girls were "it" back in the early decades of the 20th century. Travis kept going almost to the very end and was a supporter of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. Both 365gay.com and the New York Daily News have stories on Travis' long and amazing life. Here are some highlights from the Daily News coverage:

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The final curtain fell on one of Broadway's giddiest and most glorious eras Tuesday with the death of Doris Eaton Travis, the last surviving Ziegfield Girl.
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Details of her death were not released. She was 106 and was still dancing in the 21st century even though she was born just four years after the end of the 19th. Broadway plans to dim its lights Wednesday in honor of her passing.
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She first joined the annual Ziegfield Follies in 1918, claiming to be 16 when she was really 14. A year later she came back for what is generally considered the best of all the Follies shows, 1919. Among other things, that edition introduced Irving Berlin's "A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody."
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Travis herself would later introduce "Singin' In the Rain," in "The Hollywood Music Box Revue of 1929." The song was written for her by Arthur Freed and Nacio Brown, whom Eaton was dating at the time. Twenty-three years before Gene Kelly immortalized "Singin' " in the movie of the same name, Eaton thought it was just another good song.
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Eaton stayed single until she was 45, when she married one of her dance students, Paul Travis. She and Paul bought and ran a 400-acre ranch in Oklahoma, even as Doris went back to school to finish the education the Ziefield Follies interrupted seven decades earlier. In 1992, age 88, she graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Oklahoma.
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A few weeks after her 100th birthday she was talking about how busy she'd been with 40 young horses. Meanwhile, she kept her ties to Broadway, and she was an active supporter of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. This was one Ziegfield Girl who got her full kicks. "I probably have a few regrets," she said in 2004. "But I have no complaints."