Thursday, July 31, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

ZEST FOR LIFE: No Time to Slow Down

Dancing entertains 90-year-old Las Vegan and helps her stay in shape

Carmen Peterson dances swing with her instructor and competition partner, Greg Darrough. Photo by Christine H. Wetzel. Carmen Peterson likes to be dramatic on the dance floor. Photo by Christine H. Wetzel. Carmen Peterson wears several different colorful gowns, above and below, while competing in ballroom dance at a July event in Costa Mesa, Calif. COUTESY PHOTOS

Carmen Peterson didn't get an easy start in life. But she has chosen a can-do attitude toward it.

And she intends to kick up her heels, on the dance floor and off, for as long as she can.

Peterson turned 90 Wednesday less than two weeks after winning 23 awards in a national competitive dance event in Costa Mesa, Calif., for people associated with Arthur Murray Dance Studios.

She competes in a category for dancers 75 and older. Always a dance fan, Peterson never took a formal ballroom lesson until she was in her 70s. She used to compete up to four times a year, but now is down to about twice a year.

"She'll jump up and down two or three times, then skip off the floor. That's what she does when she's had a good dance," notes Murray instructor Dave White, who estimates he is young enough to be Peterson's grandson, or even great-grandson. "She's a red-headed fireball that's ready to dance at the drop of a hat."

White is not Peterson's instructor or competition partner, but he sees Peterson almost daily at the Murray studio at 4550 S. Maryland Parkway. She works there as receptionist and bookkeeper in exchange for free lessons.

"Everyone here wants to be Carmen," says Jesselyn Steele, dance director for the two Murray studios in Las Vegas. "They aspire to be Carmen because she has such a love of life. When we go to competition, everyone knows her, even if she doesn't know them."

Peterson's competition partner is Greg Darrough, who owns both the Murray studios here. Sometimes he also organizes group cruise packages for studio regulars, which Peterson has attended.

Darrough recalls members of their party dancing on a cruise until late one night: "People are just cheering us on. It's 2 a.m. They couldn't get enough of Carmen."

"I just got hooked, I guess," Peterson jokes. "After I got into competition, I thought: `This is great. It's so invigorating. You get excited.' "

Almost no dance step is foreign to Peterson. She has competed, and won, in styles ranging from the waltz and foxtrot to jitterbug and samba.

But her favorite is the tango.

"It's so dramatic, staccato. You're moving," she says, drawing out the word "moving" to give a sense of speed and power. "Pictures don't even show how great it is."

Peterson first moved to music as a child, in the mining town of Lead, S.D. She doesn't have many memories of her father, a gold miner, who died when she was 5. "He died in the flu of 1918," a vast flu epidemic, she recalls.

Miners, who inhaled dust for a living, which then damaged their lungs, seemed special prey for that flu, Peterson learned as she grew up. "All the men died," she says with only a touch of hyperbole. "The town was left with a bunch of widows. All the kids I grew up with had lost their dads" in the 1918 flu.

But Peterson does remember that her dad, in his spare time, led a small community dance orchestra in Lead. And she would twirl on the sidelines at some of his events.

She never pursued a childhood dream of taking ballet lessons, though she always fantasized about a ballet career. Instead, from her early teens throughout high school, she worked as a waitress at a local boarding house to help her widowed mother -- an Italian immigrant who never learned English -- raise the family.

Peterson met her first husband in South Dakota, but was widowed. When she arrived in Las Vegas in 1953, she was married to her second husband, Vanus Peterson, who was more than a decade older than she.

For a few years, she and Vanus owned and ran a bar on Boulder Highway called the Dust Jug. From 1959 to 2002, she worked in accounting at the Riviera.

In 1989, her husband died at age 95. "I've been single since," Peterson says. She has a son and a granddaughter, neither of whom lives in Nevada.

She has no dates, but isn't complaining: "I don't need one, with the studio."

Aside from her regular lessons, she attends weekly parties at the studio. And members dance together during outings to public venues as well. Twenty-six spots in the Las Vegas Valley regularly offer ballroom dancing, according to a list the studio has compiled.

"When we go out as a group, I dance as much" as the young women, she estimates.

Besides being a social outlet, dance fills a myriad of needs in Peterson's life. It also helps with physical fitness, artistic expression and maintaining the sharpness that's part of the competitive spirit.

The only kind of dance Peterson doesn't adore is solo, or partnerless, dancing, which she pronounces "ugly," "demeaning" and inappropriate for a woman of her age.

She easily dismisses the notion that dancing consumes too much of her life or resources. Any hobby costs money, she notes, whether it be boating or golfing or traveling. Anyway, she has other hobbies, including golfing and taking computer classes.

At only 100 pounds and 4 feet 10 inches tall, Peterson never wears slacks, denim or shoes without high heels. Her shapely legs could arouse envy. She's not afraid to say she covers up some unsightly leg veins by wearing dark hosiery. She's been a redhead ever since her black hair started going gray, back in her 40s.

"She's very flamboyant," Darrough sums up. "She stands out on the (dance) floor. Even though she's small, she stands out. Because she presents herself so `large.' "