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At first, Ava Gardner Porter thought it was a joke. How could her sister, Katie Gardner, sign her up to model clothes worn by the legendary actress Ava Gardner at an auction in Winston-Salem, N.C.?

"My sister lined all this up," said Porter, 50. "She lined this up and I didn't believe her."

She considered turning it down. But on Jan. 22, she braved snowy weather to get to Winston-Salem and walk around on a stage, wearing coats that once belonged to Ava Gardner while bidders called out prices.

"I was in a complete fog up there on that stage," the Southwest Roanoke resident recalled recently.

A lifelong fan of the actress, Porter said the chance to model Gardner's clothes was a dream come true.

"I felt like it was happening to somebody else and I was watching it," she said.

When the Gardner sisters were growing up in Christiansburg, they were steeped in family lore that claimed that they were distant relatives of the actress. Their parents were also such big fans of Ava Gardner's that they named one of their daughters after her.

"There's a belief that my father's great-grandfather and her great-grandfather were brothers," said Porter, director of the nursing program at the Jefferson College of Health Sciences.

Ava Gardner, the glamorous film star of the 1940s, '50s and '60s who starred in dozens of films including "Showboat" and "The Night of The Iguana," came from a family of tobacco farmers in Smithfield, N.C. Porter's family traces its roots to Mount Airy, N.C., a few miles from Smithfield.

"I was surrounded by her stuff: her chairs and tables and pictures and things that she had touched," said Porter of her day at the auction. "Her spirit was definitely in the room, which was strange."

After Ava Gardner died in 1990 in London, most of her possessions were shipped to her sister, Myra Gardner Pearce, in North Carolina. But Pearce developed Alzheimer's disease, so her family decided to auction off both her estate and that of her famous sister.

The Jan. 22 auction offered Gardner's furniture, artwork, porcelain, china, silverware, photographs, clothes and books. And although Pearce's family doesn't want to release the amount netted in the auction, bidders drove in from as far as Florida and Maine, said Todd Leinbach, owner of Leinbach Auction and Realty in Winston-Salem.

"We had phone bidders from London, England, and absentee and phone bids from all over the United States," he said. "I can't believe it went that big."

Some of the prize lots, Leinbach said, included the original photograph from a New York City studio that first got Gardner noticed (sold for $1,650), a snapshot of Gardner's Welsh corgi ($320), and two lambskin coats, one trimmed with fox fur (roughly $1,100) and one trimmed with mink ($1,000).

The coats, Leinbach added, "actually went at a bargain price. We thought they would bring more money than that."

Those were the coats that Ava Gardner Porter modeled. She was particularly taken with the mink-collared coat.

"That one was gorgeous and it fit me like it was designed for me," she said.

"I tried to buy it until it got out of my range," said her husband, Joe Porter, 49.

Instead, the couple bought a blue glass goblet for $150 - a steal considering it was originally priced at $1,200 - and a 1953 cover of Look magazine that shows a stoic London guard ignoring a flirtatious Ava Gardner ($30).

"If they [the guards] are not going to flinch at the most beautiful woman in the world, they're not going to flinch," Ava Gardner Porter said.

The Porters also bought a set of shot glasses that belonged to the actress, a box of books and a full-length mirror that belonged to Pearce.

To Katie Gardner, 41, who works as a court reporter in Winston-Salem, arranging for her sister to model Ava Gardner's clothes was a way to show her appreciation.

"She's always been an inspiration to me," said Katie Gardner. "She's always been a great role model."

The auction has rekindled Porter's interest in her background. In an interview a couple of weeks after the auction, she and her husband talked about going to North Carolina in the coming months to do some research.

"My dad's researched some genealogy," she said. "There has to be a connection somewhere."

Even if it turns out that there are no family ties, Porter is still thrilled about her appearance on a North Carolina stage.

"I got my one day of modeling at age 50," she said.