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For One Enchanting Night, Promgoers' Worries Recede
Jamie LaFrere, 12, left, and Paulette Ancar offer makeup advice as Cabrini High School student Kristin Ancar gets ready for prom.
(Photos By Marvin Joseph -- The Washington Post)
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Next to him, a teacher asked Lauren Pilie to twirl in her white strapless gown.
"This is a fantasy for them," Hanemann continued. "They've got gorgeous dresses, their dates are in tuxedoes. For this one night, they're leaving behind their trailers, their gutted homes."
"The energy level is through the roof," said West, who will attend Harvard University this fall.
West, who wore a red strapless gown donated by a bridal shop in Annapolis, said she was inspired to see all the dresses she had helped pack come to life on the Cabrini students -- including the pink one she had tried on and nicknamed the "Cupcake Dress."
Everybody wanted to wear that dress, so a winner had to be chosen by lottery. The lucky girl was Amy Theriot, whose grandmother suffered a heart attack and died after learning her house was swept away by Katrina.
"For once in my entire life, I feel pretty," Theriot said, taking a break from the dance floor. She was wearing a borrowed wedding tiara. "I've been teased about my looks my entire life, so tonight, I just feel so special. It's overwhelming. This is awesome."
Katrina is an omnipresent shadow in the lives of these students, especially for the several who returned to the city to finish senior year when Cabrini reopened Nov. 8, leaving parents and siblings behind in Texas and other cities in Louisiana.
Cabrini seniors DeLarge and Ryan LeFrere have been staying at Ancar's house since November. They all got ready there together, curling their brown hair into loopy, lavish curls. A pot of gumbo bubbled on the stove.
"It's been hard, but this has brought us all closer together," DeLarge said.
LaFrere's mother, Yvette Flot, a tax analyst who has been living in Houston since losing her home in East New Orleans, flew to town to see her daughter off to prom.
"I cry every time I think about it," she said of their separation.
But for the moment, things seemed almost normal: She was a mother snapping picture after picture of her daughter's prom night, preserving memories of a milestone.
Flot had lost all her family's photo albums in the hurricane. These saved moments, the famous Cabrini prom, would go on discs -- easily grabbed for the next evacuation.
