At 91, Brighton yodeler 'Bootsie' wins first-place prize. Watch how she did it.

BRIGHTON — When 91-year-old Dolores "Bootsie" Kawa was a little girl growing up on a farm in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, she picked up a skill that recently won her a multi-state talent competition among senior living community residents.

"My mother yodeled, and you pick it up," Kawa said. "You either got it or you don't."

She said she and her mother Pearl would yodel together while cooking.

"She used to make pies and cakes and give them around to people in the neighborhood. Even if we were poor, she still shared," Kawa said.

Earlier this year, Kawa was "shocked" when she was named the first-place winner of the 2023 Ageless Talent Show. Residents living in more than 40 StoryPoint Group senior living communities across several states competed.

Marie Bush, the executive director of Independence Village of Brighton Valley where Kawa lives, said the talent show was a new event for residents in StoryPoint Group communities.

"Everything that we do is to engage our residents," Bush said. "We have so many talented residents in the community. It’s nice for them to show that off and keep them engaged and entertained."

Kawa made it to the finals after performing a rendition of classic country song "I Want to be a Cowboy's Sweetheart" with her daughter Linda Frazee, a Brighton real estate agent.

Frazee sang the tune a cappella, and Kawa did the yodeling parts. They dressed up in western wear and charmed the crowd at Independence Village of Brighton Valley.

"I dragged her into it," Kawa said. "We just knew there was going to be a competition," and she wanted to sign up.

While she cannot dance like she used to due to Parkinson's disease, Kawa and her daughter made it work.

"She had to wheel me out in a wheelchair. I think Linda sings real good," she said.

A life and family of music

Kawa, who picked up the nickname Bootsie in her youth from a comic strip character, discovered she liked to dance at a young age, practicing her moves in the back of her grandfather's truck.

"They called me a second Shirley Temple," she said.

Kawa's family moved to Detroit when she was a girl. After her father died at the age of 40, when she was 16, she had to leave school to work and help support the family. She worked as a waitress and at a printing company, among other jobs.

Frazee said her mother and father Raymond met when they were youths in Detroit. Bootsie and Raymond were married in Detroit in 1953 and raised three children. Kawa has three grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

"He was a boy that would ride his bicycle by her house, and she couldn't stand him," Frazee, who works with Brighton-based real estate team Terri Lloyd & Co. - Keller Williams Realty, said of her parents.

Frazee added that her mother isn't the only one in the family with musical talent.

"We can all carry a tune," Frazee said. "One time, my dad thought I was gone. I was 18. He went to take a shower down in the basement. I heard him singing in the shower. He was a quiet man, so singing must be in our genes."

She said she and her mother also learned how to play the 19th-century American folk song "Oh! Susanna" on the harmonica together.

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Kawa's love of music, singing and dancing landed her in Sounds of Canton, a performance group comprised of local seniors. She and her fellow members would dress up in flashy outfits, sing and dance at places like the Village Theater and events for other seniors.

"We performed at the MGM casino in Detroit. We did 'Big Spender' and won first place. We did our feathers," she said. She then gestured like she was twirling a feather boa and sang some lines from the 1966 number, originally written for Broadway musical "Sweet Charity" by Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields and choreographed by Bob Fosse before appearing on a Peggy Lee album.

Bootsie joined Sounds of Canton after her husband died in 2001, just short of their 50th wedding anniversary. She was also a "Red Hatter," a member of a local chapter of The Red Hat Society, a social organization for older woman who wear red hats and purple attire at functions. She said it was a way to be social and she made a lot of friends.

— Contact Livingston Daily reporter Jennifer Eberbach at jeberbach@livingstondaily.com. 

This article originally appeared on Livingston Daily: Brighton woman, 91, wins over seniors across U.S. with yodeling talent