Ask anybody at the Ewing Senior Center and they’ll tell you, the best line dancer around is Lillian Keephart.
“She’s very agile,” said one of her students, Grace Miller. “If you saw her, you would pick her out as the most stylish of all the dancers. She can do anything. We try to imitate her, but there’s no way. She’s got the graceful movements that we don’t have.”
Keephart, who celebrates her 90th birthday in April, has been teaching various classes at the Senior Center and YWCAs for more than 23 years. Before that, she was a kindergarten teacher in Ewing for 40 years.
She loves to perform, and can usually be found in the spotlight, whether it is at senior holiday shows with the Young at Heart Dancers, in Mrs. New Jersey Senior America competitions in Atlantic City (which she won in 1996) or just teaching her line dancing classes, which she does three times a week.
But to find the roots of her love of performance, you have to go all the way back to the Great Depression.
Born in Philadelphia to a stage singer mother and a businessman father, she moved to Ewing at age 5 when her father founded D&W Blueprinting Company, which operated on Olden Avenue. At age 12, she and her brother, Joe D’Annunzio, began putting on variety shows at local churches and schools, singing, dancing and playing the banjo.
“They had a lot of those little shows,” she said. “We didn’t have television or anything.”
Keephart had another performer in the family: her sister, Lola D’Annunzio, was a stage and film actress. She had just filmed her first movie, acting with Henry Fonda in The Wrong Man in 1956, when she was killed in a car accident at age 26.
Joe D’Annunzio now lives in Florida, where he practices law. Keephart said he earned his law degree 10 years ago, when he was 76.
Keephart felt the acting bug too. As she was earning her early childhood education degree at Trenton State College, she performed in many plays. She also became an accomplished swimmer, which is another lifelong passion that she still pursues avidly. In 1960, she swam 50 miles to earn a presidential fitness award.
Today, Keephart can still be found at the Hamilton Y, teaching swimming classes and swimming almost every day.
Keephart has a loyal following among her students.
Miller, who takes her advanced line dancing class at the senior center, had effusive praise for her.
“She’s really nice and we like her,” she said. “She has style. She’s nicely dressed. That’s no phony baloney. It’s the truth. I wish I could be like her at 90.”
Keephart said she plans to continue teaching, dancing and swimming long after 90. Genetics are on her side: she said her father lived till 101 and her grandfather to 103.
She said swimming and dancing keep her healthy and happy.
However, there is one thing that keeps her up at night. Sometimes she lies awake thinking of new choreography.
“It’s just there and I have to get it out,” she said.
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