The curtain closes on a life lived well – with dancing, racing American Quarter Horses and, above all, vim and vigor.

I was lugging a big camera bag, all right? And it was very heavy.

That was how I rationalized it in my mind, at least, when I found myself struggling to keep up with the 101-year-old Doris Eaton Travis when I visited her in 2005 to do a story for America’s Horse. She was an absolute gem – warm, gracious and extremely energetic. She was waiting for me on the front porch as I drove in to her Norman, Oklahoma, ranch. And from there – as though she couldn’t wait to talk about the horses that had been her passion for the past 30 years or so – she sped inside toward the study, where shelves of trophies and winners circle photos awaited. It was, ahem, a little hard to match her pace.

We laughed about it at the time, and she told me her secret: always staying busy, both mentally and physically.

Sadly, I read today in The New York Times, that time had finally caught up with her. On Tuesday, at 106, she died of an aneurysm. The venerable Times thought her death noteworthy because she was the last remaining Ziegfield Girl, an icon of the Jazz Age.

“Beneath towering, glittering, feathered headdresses, the Ziegfeld Girls floated across grand Broadway stages in lavish pageants known as the Ziegfeld Follies, often to the wistful tune that Irving Berlin wrote just for them: ‘A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody,’ ” the Times wrote.

“It was beauty, elegance, loveliness,” Mrs. Travis told the newspaper in 2005, “beauty and elegance like a French painting of a woman’s body.”

As the Great Depression took its toll on Broadway, Mrs. Travis found her fortune elsewhere – teaching ballroom dance lessons. She eventually opened 18 Arthur Murray franchise studios in Michigan, and it was in Detroit that she met her husband-to-be, Paul Travis, an entrepreneur in the automotive industry.

The Travises were introduced to horses by some friends of theirs, and racing American Quarter Horses became Act 3 in Mrs. Travis’ life. Their first horse was Miss Three Wars, who finished second to the great Easy Jet in the 1969 All American Futurity, the American Quarter Horse Association’s richest race for 2-year-olds.

Mrs. Travis relived that race with me like it had happened yesterday, but with a graciousness borne of another age. The All American that year was a muddy one, and Easy Jet’s larger stature gave him an advantage on the slippery track.

“I don’t mean this to belittle Easy Jet,” she said, “but he was bigger than she, and stride for stride, he would have to win the race.”

Miss Three Wars lost that race by just a nose, but in the Rainbow Futurity, another prestigious race in Ruidoso, New Mexico, the fortunes were reversed, and Miss Three Wars prevailed over Easy Jet.

The Travises were hooked, and they began a breeding program on their Norman, Oklahoma, ranch. Mrs. Travis found a new role as the bookkeeper, immersing herself in the horse world as whole-heartedly as she had any of her previous ventures.

She told me about still other adventures – how she had earned her general equivalency diploma in her 70s and, taking just one or two classes a semester, earned her bachelor’s degree at age 88 with a 3.65 grade point average. When Paul passed away in 2000, Mrs. Travis continued to manage the  horse ranch, opening it up as a retirement facility she called the Travis Ranch Nursing Home for Horses.

A sign out front read: “Happy Horses Live Here.” And, she said in 2005, “It’s delightful to me to look out in the pastures and see the horses running around.”

In 2003, she wrote her memoirs, “The Days We Danced,” which is available on Amazon and is a great read. I had purchased it in advance of our interview, so I’d know as much as possible about Mrs. Travis beforehand. I was thrilled when she offered to inscribe it to me. Her charming note expressed hope that I’d be visited by “the bluebird of happiness.” It wasn’t until later that I realized that was a reference to a production she had been in in 1911. (!)

Mrs. Travis continued to dance throughout her life, appearing in a yearly AIDS benefit on Broadway. In fact, the Times noted, she performed in the 2010 benefit just a little more than two weeks before her death. True to form – at 106 years of age – she performed a few kicks but then apologized that she no longer did cartwheels.

Her zest for life was contagious, and after our interview, I left her ranch stepping a little bit livelier – camera bag or no. Mrs. Travis, you were an inspiration.

Holly Clanahan
Editor, America's Horse magazine