August 2, 2021

Meet Resident Lois Carter, Former Cheerleader and Sports Illustrated Cover Star

About Brookdale Senior Living

Lois Carter knows the magic of being in the right place at the right time. On New Year’s Day in 1960, she was on the football field cheering her Syracuse University team on in the Cotton Bowl. Little did she know, a photographer from Sports Illustrated magazine was there covering the game.

“One day I got the mail and there was a letter from Sports Illustrated,” says Carter, now a resident at Brookdale Manilus. “They had been trying to reach me to get my permission to use the picture on their cover...Sports Illustrated wanted to use the cover to introduce the new season of football.”

Carter wasn’t even aware someone had taken her picture, but all it took was one photo-perfect moment for her to become the face of cheerleading for the season.

lois carter on the cover of sports illustrated

“My parents and sisters and brothers were very excited,” she says. “I was excited! It was fun to have something like that happen.”

In the years that followed, Carter’s Sports Illustrated cover still garnered attention.

“The Sports Illustrated cover brought me a lot of mail from servicemen and even sailors at sea,” she says. “Cover collectors asked for autographs, and I still get letters requesting that I autograph that cover. My husband was in the military in Germany for three years, and I even got requests from there.”

When Lois Carter started cheerleading in elementary school, she could’ve never imagined she’d become a cover star — but there were also many other ways the sport shaped her life. More than just a fun hobby, cheerleading became a way for her to make friends and learn important social skills.

“Cheerleading has helped me in life by increasing my personal confidence,” she says. “It gave me a good self-image...It helped me meet people, and I learned from cheerleading to be a team player and to be friendly to everyone.”

These lessons inspired her to become a marriage and family therapist after graduating, helping people all along the way. Every once in a while, though, she’d return to Syracuse for Homecoming and cheer on the field as an alumni cheerleader.

These days, Carter — who turned 83 this July — can’t perform all of her former signature cheer moves, but she is still finding ways to stay active and spread cheer around her Brookdale community.

“I can no longer do many of the things I did during those days, and of course, I miss that,” Carter says. “Now living at Brookdale Manlius, we have a wonderful “B-Fit” class led by Patty and Nicole. They are our cheerleaders, and we enjoy it so much.”

“My parents and sisters and brothers were very excited,” she says. “I was excited! It was fun to have something like that happen.”

In the years that followed, Carter’s Sports Illustrated cover still garnered attention.

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