At the Perkins School (prom), it's one enchanted evening
The Boston Globe, June 6, 2009
By Joseph P. Kahn
Read the original story and watch video
WATERTOWN - By 5 o'clock, two hours before prom time, the clouds of hairspray had grown so thick inside Fisher Hall, they'd wafted into a courtyard. Inside the women's residence hall, Leslie Gruette was getting her hair styled and makeup applied before the biggest social event of the school year.
"Something pretty, but simple," requested Gruette, 20, who'll graduate later this month from the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown. Bronze shimmer? Sure, she said. Lipgloss? Why not.
Thursday evening's prom was the fourth Gruette has attended during her eight years at Perkins, the oldest school in the United States for young people who are blind. Many of its 200 students, day and residential, have other disabilities as well.
Invitees had to be at least 16 years old and dressed appropriately. About 60 signed up for this spring's prom. As the excitement built Thursday afternoon, so did the anxiety.
"The first one was great," Gruette confided after finishing her makeup session. "But the last two stunk because none of the boys would dance with me."
Talking about why prom night was so special, she sounded like any high school senior readying herself for this rite of passage.
"Getting dressed up. Hanging out with friends. Having a last hurrah," she replied. Her smile faded, though, when she talked about her years in public school. "People either made fun of me or pitied me, and I didn't like that," said Gruette. "What every blind person wants is to be accepted for who they are. To look past the cane, you know."
For parents, students, and school personnel who are involved with the annual spring prom at Perkins, looking past the canes, wheelchairs, and hearing aids is merely the prelude to one enchanted evening. One night when, for a few hours at least, curls and corsages take precedence over other more pressing concerns and a mother can share her own prom memories with a daughter who, as one parent put it Thursday, "You've always worried will never have this kind of life experience."
Yet experience it they did. There were pizza parties in the residence halls and more than a little last-minute hair-fussing. Young men wearing suits and tuxedoes for the first time asked for help knotting their neckties. Danny Guilbeault, 17, wondered whether his date, 18-year old Kerryne Ohlson, liked to dance.
"I don't know, because we've never gone out before," Guilbeault confessed. "But she's hot!"
Karen Levesque of Springfield snapped photos of her son Corey, 17, wearing a tux that had belonged to his late grandfather. Levesque struggled to keep her emotions in check, yet laughed in recounting how her son "got shot down by the first girl he asked," a normal part of the prom experience, she said, that only made this event seem more special.
By 6:30 p.m., dozens of prom-goers were exiting their dorms and pairing up with dates waiting anxiously on the walkway.
Cameras popped up all along the path leading to the main campus building, where the dance was being held. Parents moved in closer for keepsake shots. A student musician played the national anthem on his accordion. Fathers stepped forward to pin flowers on daughters who would never know how good they looked this night. But they could feel and hear it, and for now that was all that seemed to matter.
Addie Chase-McCann, an 18-year-old day student from Scituate, pirouetted in front of her family, promising she'd be moonwalking before the night was through. "This isn't a wig, either," she said impishly, twirling a finger through her coiffed hair.
Near the dance hall, in a rotunda decorated especially for the occasion, students lined up to have their portraits snapped. The line grew long, but nobody seemed in much of a hurry. A band called Dirty Blonde played a few warmup licks. Lead singer Cheryl Hagan Aruda said she'd worked at Perkins for seven years and hoped to make this night a special one. She already knew many of the students by name. "They told us it was an '80s theme, and that's not really our musical style," she said with mild complaint.
Still, the band had worked up an appropriate set list - Prince's "Purple Rain" and Michael Jackson's "Billy Jean," for starters - and would do their best to get students dancing, she promised.
It did not take long, either. Those who could not hear the beat danced anyway, feeling the music's vibrations through the hall's floorboards. "Tonight is really the embodiment of our philosophy - all we see is possibility," Steven Rothstein, Perkins School president, said as he watched from the back of the room.
"The mechanics may be different, but the prom experience is just the same."
As the evening wore on, weary prom-goers stopped to snack on lemonade and cupcakes. At 8 p.m., each graduating senior was handed a gold paper crown to place on his or her head and was introduced on the dance floor.
Gruette, the class president, received the honor of walking out first. Her date, Brendan Ginter, was beaming by her side.
An hour later, Danny Guilbeault and Kerryne Ohlson were still on the dance floor, boogieing furiously to "Proud Mary," and Rothstein was still cherishing one student's response earlier in the night when he told her how lovely she looked.
"You know what she said? She said, 'Yeah, and I wish my date weren't blind so he could see how beautiful I look.' "
Joseph P. Kahn can be reached at jkahn@globe.com.
RSS
Bookmark
