Never too late
CHERYL SCHWEIZER | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 10 years AGO
Senior Reporter Cheryl Schweizer is a journalist with more than 30 years of experience serving small communities in the Pacific Northwest. She began her post-high-school education at Treasure Valley Community College and enerned her journalism degree at Oregon State University. After working for multiple publications, she has settled down at the Columbia Basin Herald and has been a staple of the newsroom for more than a decade. Schweizer’s dedication to her communities and profession has earned her the nickname “The Baroness of Bylines.” She covers a variety of beats including health, business and various municipalities. | April 26, 2016 1:45 PM
EPHRATA — It’s prom. Pretty girls in pretty dresses, handsome guys in tuxedos and suits, corsages, pictures and a special dinner. The ladies at Garden Oasis Assisted Living in Ephrata got out their pretty dresses, the guys got out their suits and the kitchen staff fixed a special dinner Friday night. It was prom.
“A Night to Remember” was the theme (because prom always has a theme). Columbia Basin Hospital Activities Director Diane Stucky said making it a night to remember for residents was what it was all about.
The subject came up at a residents’ council meeting, and “a lot of the ladies were talking about dancing,” Stucky said, and how they hadn’t gone to as many dances as they wanted, back in the day. Some had wanted to attend prom back in school but couldn’t. So she asked if they’d be interested in a dance, if it could be pulled together.
“A lot of the ladies really wanted to do it,” she said. But there aren’t a lot of dance halls left. “So we put one on for them.”
The dance might have started at Garden Oasis, but it soon expanded to the hospital’s nursing and extended stay unit. The date was set, invitations went out, and “we just decked that (dining room) out as best we could.”
Residents were allowed to invite a guest, and many prom girls came with a son or daughter or husband, or maybe even a brother. A couple of employees volunteered their husbands, and “everybody had a date. Nobody came alone,” Stucky said.
About 60 people filled the dining hall.
The staff took prom pictures (and all attendees will get a framed copy) and a special dinner was served by the kitchen crew. The dining hall was all decked out in white tablecloths and balloons. Hospital employees Deanna Sturkey and Sally Gundry sang a few songs.
There was even a prom king and queen, the names drawn from a hat. John Morris was the king, and when it came time to pick a queen, “we drew his mother’s name,” Stucky said. Shirley Morris was the prom queen.
Stucky said it was advertised as semi-formal, because some of the ladies had gotten rid of all their formal dresses. But it turned out everybody really wanted to wear a formal dress, she said. So the activity department employees looked for dresses at yard sales and thrift stores, and people from the community donated dresses.
“It was a lot of work but we pulled it off. It was like a dream come true for some of those ladies,” Stucky said.
Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at [email protected].
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