L-S students are going a really long way to throw a homecoming dance for two Mississippi high schools — complete with dresses, music and a crown.
By Robyn Meadows
Published Oct 12, 2005 15:38
They have to take it a step further. They have to go that extra mile — 1,168 miles, if you want to count them.
On Nov. 2, about 30 of them will pile into an Executive Coach bus and head to Long Beach High School in Long Beach, Miss.
It seems these plucky teens plan to throw a homecoming dance on Saturday, Nov. 5, for Long Beach High, located in an area devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
“It’s ballooning into something greater than we expected,” said Matt Cooper, an L-S science teacher who is helping students organize the event.
But before L-S can pull this off, there is a lot of work to do.
L-S is hosting a benefit concert from 4:30 to 9:30 p.m. Monday at the high school. Expect some raw talent from seven teen bands and a barbecue.
L-S students are also asking for donations of money, homecoming dresses, new button-down dress shirts and ties, cases of sodas, food, a photographer, a disc jockey, sashes and a crown for the homecoming queen.
Students are also selling candy, going door-to-door for donations and asking businesses for help.
The 10 students comprising the event’s organization team will go to Mississippi. And then, the 10 students who raise the most money also get to take the trip south.
After that, the remaining top fund-raisers enter a drawing, and an additional 10 lucky students get to go.
The deadline to donate is Oct. 27. Call 464-3311 and ask for Cooper.
Executive Coach, a Lancaster-based charter bus service, has donated two drivers for the trip and cut its fee to $1 a mile.
The idea to help a Mississippi school started small, with one student, senior Tyler Dietrich, 18.
Dietrich’s dad lives in Ocean Springs, Miss., — about 28 miles from Long Beach — so he knows and loves the area.
“I’ve never seen an idea of mine come off the ground like this before,” Dietrich said. “I’m jumping out of my shoes.”
Dietrich asked a few of his buddies to help. One of them was sophomore Alyssa Henry, 15.
“I think it’s amazing,” Henry said of how the idea has bloomed.
Dietrich approached the principal, who suggested that the students work with Cooper, the science teacher.
Then, Cooper enlisted the help of the Interact Club, a student community service club, and Jackie St. John, Spanish teacher and student council adviser at L-S.
Cooper found out about Long Beach High through a local church, looked them up on the Internet and gave them a call to find out what they needed.
Long Beach school officials told Cooper: Please, no more pencils. They have three tractor trailers stuffed with bookbags, pens and other school supplies.
What they needed was a party, a homecoming dance, to give their students what they deserved, a sense of normal high school life.
For the homecoming football game, the Long Beach Bear Cats play the Pass Christian Pirates, so L-S and Long Beach agreed to invite Pass Christian High School to the party also.
The towns of Pass Christian and Long Beach are about seven miles apart. Both suffered severe damage from the hurricane.
St. John is working with the Long Beach High School student council advisers Peggy Lassabe and Becky Cullifer to organize the event.
“So many people have lost so much,” Lassabe said during a phone interview. “The (students) have come back to school with the realization that life at school is not going to be normal either.”
The hurricane destroyed 75 percent of Long Beach, a town of 20,000.
Long Beach School District has five schools. Harper McCaughan Elementary School sat by the beach, until the storm surge destroyed most of it.
The remaining four schools faced damage as well — some worse than others.
About a quarter of the district’s staff and faculty lost their homes. And about 30 percent of the district’s student population has been displaced.
Long Beach sophomore Kristin Sharp, 16, describes the scene after the storm: “It was like a war zone. It didn’t even seem like a town.”
Pass Christian, population 6,600, has four schools, and three of them were devastated. Pass Christian High School is rubble. Those students are attending school in modular classrooms.
Obviously, students could use some good cheer.
In addition to the dance, when L-S students arrive in Mississippi, they will bring hundreds of Long Beach Bear Cat T-shirts for every student in the school district.
They will play a game of tag football with the Long Beach Middle School football team. And, they will throw the middle school team and its cheerleaders a recognition banquet. The team didn’t get to play this year because of the hurricane.
L-S students will stay busy during their trip.
They will work with Long Beach students to decorate and prepare for the dance in the school’s gym.
The homecoming theme is “Hollywood Nights.”
So L-S is asking for donations of new movies to give as door prizes, movie posters, a red carpet and anything else they can get their hands on to throw a party worthy of “Entertainment Tonight.” The L-S students will come home Nov. 7.
Homecomings in the South are traditionally much more lavish than those in the North.
Long Beach’s homecoming events usually cover three days.
On the first night, many southern high schools throw a parade, complete with floats, down a main street. But there is no more main street in Long Beach, Lassabe said.
Sharp is moved that L-S is doing this for her school.
“We never thought anyone would do anything like that,” she said. “We thought maybe some schools would be able to send us some decorations or something, but them actually coming down is just really unbelievable. We are really grateful.”
Long Beach senior Lizzie Maloy, 17, said that she can’t wait to meet the L-S students.
She wants to thank them. Several of her classmates lost everything.
“It really has been rough,” she said.
As for her family, “We have to get a new roof, and my mom owns five rental properties, and all of those are trashed. And, we still have to pay six mortgages a month. We don’t have any tenants.”
Cullifer said that in small communities like Long Beach and Pass Christian, entire towns get involved with homecoming, a party steeped in tradition.
So this dance is a morale booster for students, their parents and for the towns of Long Beach and Pass Christian.
She said L-S is giving something back to two Mississippi high schools “that they thought they had lost.”
“It just kind of leaves you speechless,” Cullifer said.
