Moms recall their proms
The fashion trends change from generation to generation, but — big hairdos or not — proms remain virtually the same: the grand send-off celebration of senior year.
The rite of passage causes parents to recall their own high school days. What color was your gown? Who was your date? What was the evening's theme? Where did the dinner and dancing take place?
Here three young Butler County women talk about the anticipation of going to their senior proms this spring, and their moms, and in one case a grandma, compare their experiences.
Comparing gownsMoniteau senior Darian Castello chose a lightly sequined gown, warm orange like a sunset, for her high school prom. It's a far cry from the lavender number worn in the 1980s by her mom, Deanna Panza."Pastels were the big color then," Panza said.Panza, of West Sunbury, still has the actual gown, a softly gathered, spaghetti-strapped sheath with a sheer overlayer on top.In fact, she tried the dress on again, and it still fits.When Panza's mother, Ellen Hill of Valencia, went searching through her photographs for one from her daughter's prom night, she came across a black-and-white photo from her own 1962 prom.The black-and-white picture doesn't quite do justice to the many layers of white chiffon and the pink flowers at the neckline.
"Ours were frouncy and fruppy," Hill said."Now the girls wear them all tall and straight."Hill remembers wearing a wrist corsage, the same as Darian, for lack of somewhere to pin a regular corsage."In my day, very few of the kids had cars, so it was acceptable to have your parents drive you to the prom," Hill said."We weren't allowed to drive to school, either."That's very different from today, with most students allowed to use a car for the event, although some schools bus their students to and from the prom site."We did mostly slow dancing and just a little bit of fast dancing —- rock 'n' roll was in around here, but not that much," recalled Hill, who went to Pine-Richland High School.The costs then and now are certainly different. When Panza went to her own prom at Mars High School in 1982, her dress cost $50. She paid more than that just for the underlayer for Darian's gown, she noted.A ticket for Moniteau's prom, held Friday at Butler County Community College, cost $25, the price being reduced by fundraising the junior class does for the event.Darian's brother, Justin, coincidentally serves as junior class president and so was in charge of setting up "An Evening in Paris."
"The juniors do all the arrangements; the seniors just show up," Panza said.The after-prom is an extra expense, but it was actually canceled this year."Not enough people signed up to go to Kennywood the next day," Darian said."We thought we'd just go on our own if people wanted to go.""There's a grand march at the high school before the prom. Some people are just doing that," she said.Her mom made her wrist corsage of silk flowers, mostly because they didn't think they would be able to match flowers to the unique color of the dress.Darian also selected silver, high-heeled sandals and sparkling jewelry, contrasting instead of coordinating with her gown."At first I tried to find orange jewelry that would match," she said, "but we thought maybe that would be too much orange."Darian went to the Slippery Rock High School prom two years ago when she was a sophomore because her boyfriend was a senior there. The pair elected to skip the Moniteau junior-senior prom last year. Darian said it wasn't important to her then."But my senior year, yes, it's important," she said.Rushing headlong toward graduation now, members of the Moniteau Class of 2006 recently completed their senior projects. Darian focused on cosmetology. The vo-tech student has served almost all the hours she needs to be licensed and, looking ahead, hopes to continue to work at J.C. Penney."I think it's just an exciting time," Panza said. "I think they're just excited to be seniors, and that's the same as when I was in school."
Connie Utz of Mars recalled her prom day, her date and where the 1974 event was held with ease. She still has a tiny, multi-fold booklet as a memento of the evening."Our class was the first from Mars to go (to Laube Hall in Freeport). It wasn't even finished yet," Utz said.She and date Larry Truver, the fellow senior she was dating at the time, were photographed in front of blooming bushes, making for a colorful picture — especially considering her print gown and her date's blue tux.She said a friend subsequently looked at the photograph and said, "You never want to do that. You want a plain background."Yet prom dates to this day pose for pictures outside in many back, front and side yards if the weather allows.Now her daughter Julie is ready to attend her own "Picture Perfect" senior prom May 12 at the Carnegie Music Hall in Pittsburgh.Julie had no trouble finding a gown she liked."We weren't even out shopping for the dress; we were just shopping," her mom said."It was just hanging up on the wall. ... She wasn't in the mood to try it on, but she did and she liked it.""It's red; that's my favorite color," Julie said.As do most high schools, Mars students will start off the evening with a prom walk for photo opportunities at the high school before being transported to the prom site.Silver shoes with a heel will grace her feet, at least for the prom walk.
"I have heeled shoes for the prom walk, but I probably will just wear flip-flops for the rest of the night," Julie said.Perhaps today's lessened formality also allows students to go to prom without a specific date, as Panza said is the case at Moniteau."I think it's great the kids can go by themselves or as a group. In my day, you had to have a date," said Panza's mother of her '60s prom.As for the clothing fashions and long, straight hairstyles of the '70s, Julie said, "They were OK; they were a little different. Everything's coming back."<B>Hand-made gown</B>Marla Pettit's memories of her 1978 prom at Shaler High School aren't as vivid as those of others."At that time, Shaler was graduating 980 in a class. It was a very, very large high school, an unfortunate situation, a merging situation," Pettit, now of Butler, recalled.Juniors and seniors went to school from 7:30 to 11:30 a.m. and then were done for the day, she said.Ninth and 10th graders attended the school in the afternoon."I was in the middle of the merger. It was a horrible experience," Pettit said. "High school is not that great of a memory for me."She took advantage of the situation by working full time from noon to 8 p.m. every day. "I did go to the prom, but my social life was basically at work. We did go, a group of us, about 12 of us. I was not dating the guy I went with."
"My mom made my dress. Originally she bought the material and then decided to use it for something else. She was a great sewer. Then we got silk — rose color. She designed it and made it. It was very simple. I remember is had a U-shaped neckline," Pettit said.Her daughter Erin, a senior at Knoch High School, said she can't imagine her mom making her prom gown. Both mom and daughter said they stopped at a shop on the return trip from visiting a college, and that the $100 spending limit was met."I like the bottom of the dress," Erin said of the hem that ripples like water. "I knew I wanted blue or green." She got both."I don't have the memories about high school like when other people talk about high school," Pettit said."That's why I like Knoch. It's small. I think they're getting the high school experience."Erin played soccer in the fall and is running track this spring."With sports when I was in high school, you'd have had to come back to school. I was involved through ninth grade in many different things, then not at all," her mom said.Erin also works at Concordia Nursing Home. She said she was going to stop by Friday on the way to Knoch's prom at the Four Points Sheraton in Mars to see the elderly residents.Like Darian at Moniteau, Erin too went to the prom when she was in 10th grade with her boyfriend."When we went, it was more as a couple because it wasn't my class. It's definitely a big deal now," Erin said."We make it a big deal because we don't have a lot of formals. It's the grand finale."They make a big deal of the preparation, too."We're allowed to leave school at 8 a.m. You can get a pass," Erin said.Usually students go out to eat breakfast and then some have hair, makeup or nails done, she said.There's no formal after-prom."We'll go to Kennywood the next day, a lot of kids do," she said.Pettit said she thinks Erin will keep her prom gown, at least for a while. If not, there's a younger sister in fifth grade who might want to wear it someday."It'll be kept," Pettit said. "I like recycling."
