Salisbury residents are less likely to know Libby Stone than they are her husband, Dr.
Clyde Young, who’s famous for tooting his trumpet at Duke Blue Devil basketball
games.But in the Charlotte
area, Stone has made a name for herself by establishing one of Charlotte’s first
professional modeling agencies and schools.
And her talents as an agent are as
popular as her husband’s tunes are among the Cameron Crazies.
Recently, she used her talents to
help another Salisbury resident, Bill Gibson, 33, of Race-It Communications. Stone
provided models for Gibson, who used the local landmarks of First Union, the Bell Tower
and the Rowan County Courthouse for a photo shoot. Gibson now uses those images on an
Internet site for client Conita Technologies.
During every step of the photo
shoot, Stone made sure her models had everything they needed. She knows, because she began
her career the same way many of them did — competing in beauty contests.
Stone grew up in Detroit.
“I was in the Miss
Detroit-Miss Michigan pageant many, many years ago,”she says, though she won’t
say exactly when. “If Itold you the year you’d probably figure out my age!”
She didn’t win first prize,
but she came away with something better than any trophy — the key to her future.
“I was an alternate in the
Miss Detroit pageant, and Iwas awarded a scholarship to a modeling school, which I had
always wanted to do, and did some modeling,”Stone said.
She attended the Patricia
Steven’s Modeling School, which had branches across the country at the time. While
she studied modeling, she sang professionally.
That’s how she met her late
husband, Wesley Stone, who was in the School of Aviation Medicine at Lackland Air Force
Base in San Antonio, Texas. He spotted her singing with the Pierson Thall Orchestra at the
St. Anthony Hotel. They would later marry and move to Stone’s hometown of Lumberton.
But Lumberton was too small for a
model like Stone to find work. And when she looked to the Charlotte area for work, she
discovered something important: Charlotte didn’t have a modeling agency.
She opened the Libby Stone
Finishing and Modeling School in 1954 and it operated unchallenged in the Charlotte market
for eight years.
“Just through being one of
the first modeling schools in Charlotte, Ihad a lot of publicity and I was on TV a lot and
so people knew me,” Stone said.
She drew clients and kept them.
Although she’s moved her agency several times over the years, Stone makes sure each
site has what she needs.
Now strategically located in
upscale Dilworth, on Charlotte Drive and East Boulevard, her agency offers mirrors,
cameras, lighting and makeup. Everything an aspiring model needs to learn the runway.
And that’s what Stone enjoys
the most about her work.
“It’s very rewarding to
see someone who didn’t know anything about it (modeling) and then to see them on a
runway or in a TV commercial or in print,”Stone said.
Stone has supplied models to major
companies, including Coca-Cola, Ford and Fossil watches.
The commericial for Fossil watches
was filmed in Charlotte, but will be released in Europe.
She even got some work for her
husband, Dr. Young, whom she met thanks to their mutual love of music.
Introduced through some musician
friends in Charlotte, the couple married in 1991, and Stone moved to Salisbury. She now
sings with Young’s band, the Music Makers Orchestra, in which Young shows off his
trumpet.
But Stone cast Young in a
commercial with a different instrument.
“He played the drums in the
back seat of a race car driven by Kyle Petty,”Stone says with a laugh. “People
talked about that all over for about a year.”
Since the Petty commercial, Stone
has done other work in the world of NASCAR. Her models have appeared in several Coca-Cola
racing commercials. Those commercials, released only for theaters, can be seen at Tinsel
Town and other cinemas during movie previews.
Race fans can also see
Stone’s models in a catalog produced by Chase Authentics. The Charlotte-based company
markets clothing lines for Bobby Labonte, Rusty Wallace and other drivers.
With international commercials
like Fossil watches, Stone sometimes finds herself looking for unusual talent to fill a
client’s needs. In one instance, Ford needed models for a commercial that would air
only in Saudi Arabia.
“So I could only use Saudi
Arabians for the commercial,” she said.
But finding talent is only the
first step in the process. With every commercial or photo shoot Stone must make sure the
model comes with the right look, from wardrobe to makeup.
Despite that hectic schedule,Stone
still loves her job.
“I like to bring the
student’s potential out,”Stone said. “Everybody’s blessed with some
talent, and we try to help them find and develop that talent.” |
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