Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 13, 1992 TAG: 9202130387
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: S-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALMENA HUGHES NORTH CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
SHOT AT THE BIG TIME
YOUNG, internationally famous models and jet-setting, bicoastal-living celebrities take it in stride when someone calls to have them appear in Essence magazine.Louise Dent, on the other hand, 91 and living in Melrose Towers in Northwest Roanoke, was a little surprised when the 1-million-plus-circulation periodical for black women sought her out for its January 1992 issue.
She wasn't even sure what Essence was. But she handled the request with her usual aplomb.
The fuss all started when Dent's niece, Louise West, a copyright attorney in New York, bragged about her aunt to a friend who is a stylist for Essence. When the magazine decided to do a feature on "older" women, Dent's name came up.
"My niece called me on Saturday," Dent recalls. "She said she thought they would want to take the pictures maybe the next month. Wednesday morning early, she called again and said, `Your ticket's there; you're coming to New York.' I said, `When?' And she said, `Tomorrow.' "
Dent, no stranger to traveling, says she had to move a little faster than usual in order to get her hair done, get her bags packed and catch the Thursday afternoon flight. But she managed and, accompanied by a friend, Carol Harris, she was off to the Big Apple.
"A lot of people say that New York people are rude and selfish," Dent says. "But they were the nicest bunch I ever worked with."
Dent and Harris spent three days in New York, with the last one dedicated to touring the city. Their first day, they rode in a chauffeured limousine from the airport to West's home in New Rochelle, N.Y. The next day, the limo picked them up for lunch and the fashion shooting.
"That was a mess," Dent says. "There were a lot of people in there - a hair stylist, a makeup person, wardrobe people and a lot of others that I'm not sure what they were doing.
"The day I was there, there were two other ladies. One was 73 or 75 and the other was 80. When we walked in, they had one of the ladies down on the floor posing. I told my niece, `If they expect me to get down there, they expect wrong. I'm not getting down there.' "
Dent stayed off the floor and underwent the makeup application, hair fluffing, costuming and lighting that transformed her into the glamourous white-haired woman in the magazine. But, she laughs, "It's not me."
For one thing, she says, she's wearing black stockings, which she never does.
"And they've got me snapping my fingers. You know I don't snap my fingers. One time they wanted me to put my legs up. I told them, `Uh-uh.' "
The "real" Dent was born Louise Brooks in Salem on Sept. 22, 1900, and reared in Rocky Mount. She joined First Baptist Church around 1927 or '28 and for many years was active in its Bible Band, Helping Hand Club, women's club, senior missionaries and Golden Rule Bible class.
She moved to Roanoke 68 years ago, when she wed John H. Dent, her spouse of 32 years who died in 1954.
Dent, the only survivor of 10 children, gets plenty of pampering from her family. Besides West, Dent has a son and daughter-in-law, Eugene and Lu; grandson, Eugene Jr., and his wife, Rhonda; nieces, Janice Womack and Viola Smith; and five great-grandchildren. By always calling, writing and visiting, "They're what keep me young," she says.
Dent also attributes her longevity and relatively good health to hard work and good habits. She doesn't drink or smoke, watches what she eats, gets what exercise she can and gets plenty of rest and sleep.
"Every night before I go to bed, I read my Bible," she says. "And I never have to set an alarm to get up."
She enjoys cooking and entertaining, "although I don't do too much of it now," she insists. Still, her family looks forward to her special fruit cookies at Christmas, and she managed to whip up a delicious chicken salad and lemonade in case anyone was hungry after her recent interview.
Dent laughs at the brief biography next to her photo in Essence.
"I don't know where they got that I love clothes," she says. "My nieces just buy me things and I wear them."
She should say she wears some of them, because she has very definite ideas on what she likes and dislikes. For example, she declined her niece's offer to buy her the suit she wore in the fashion shooting.
"You can't see it on the pictures, but it's some kind of lacey-like thing. It's too dressy for me. I don't go anywhere but to church. Where would I wear it?"
She says her nieces love to dress her in red, but personally, she prefers herself in any shade of blue.
"I've got a big-brimmed red hat in the closet from three Christmases ago that I've never had on. Can you see me in a great big red hat?" she chuckles.
She finds today's fashions, with their high hemlines and low necklines, "just horrible." Their horror so fascinates her, in fact, that one of Dent's favorite pastimes is watching Wheel of Fortune to see just how horrible Vanna White's latest outfit will be. "She wears some of the worse things I've ever seen," Dent says.
She says she knows that a few people have successfully entered new careers during their senior years, but she's not interested in doing so.
"I never thought about modeling when I was younger, and I'm too old to start thinking about it now."
Instead, she thinks about what were even higher points in her life than the Essence appearance, like the trips she's taken with her family to Los Angeles and the Bahamas or the grand surprise party they threw at the Hotel Roanoke for her 88th birthday. She laughs that she's now scouting a location for the party she wants on her 100th.
Pointing a finger toward the sky, she concludes, "I just live every day so when the day is over, I can go up there."