By Donald H. Harrison
LA JOLLA, Calif.— The senior prom came a bit late for Miriam Selvin,
Leslie Sanders, and Max and Pat Friedheim—about 60 years late. But no
bother, just because people didn't have a senior prom when they were in high
school, it doesn't mean they can't have a prom now that they are
seniors—senior citizens, that is.
The Lawrence
Family JCC held a dance Sunday afternoon enabling the senior citizens to
experience many things they had missed as teenagers. Selvin was chosen prom
queen, and Sanders her king, while the Friedheims were voted the "best
dressed" of the affair held in the JCC's Garfield Theatre.
The four-member Pastels band played the swing music that was popular in the
1940s, when many of the attendees went to school, and the eight-member Savoy
Street Stompers demonstrated dances that might have been popular back when the
seniors were teenagers.
The prom queen and king were among a group of three men and three women who were
selected by applause after standing on stage and telling why they would like
such honors
In
her first interview as a royal, Selvin said that when she grew up in Brooklyn if
her school had a prom, no one took much notice because "it was war time and
there weren't many fellows around." She never attended any prom until
the one held on Sunday.
Perhaps it was destined for Selvin to become a prom queen, having previously
been a "cover girl" for the senior program of the JCC. She
explained: "They have a journal that they put out, with all the events, and
I have been on the cover a couple of times. I was in the exercise group a number
of years ago and the photographer was taking pictures of the pretty gym
instructor. I kidded him: 'You only take pictures of the pretty ones?' And then
he put the camera on me. And for three years after that, there were postcards
going out, issued each January, with my picture on them, about joining the JCC."
Her "king" was chosen by the audience in a competition in which her
husband, Manny, also participated. But Manny has confidence his and Miriam's
relationship will be long lasting no matter who the audience matches with his
wife. After all, this coming Wednesday they will be celebrating their 53rd
wedding anniversary.
Prom king Sanders said that he grew up in London, England, where high school
proms were not a custom. What do you do at the end of high school in
England? he was asked. "You go to work!" he responded.
Didn't it seem strange that someone from Britain had to come all the way to the
former colonies to be named a king? Sanders was asked.
"Absolutely, and not only that, I don't want to dance with commoners
now!" he responded with a laugh.
Max
and Pat Friedheim competed in separate events to win honors as the
"best-dressed man" and "best-dressed woman," and Max gave
all the credit for his victory to Pat. When it comes to his wardrobe, he
explained, "my bride sets it up for me." They have been married
28 years—the second marriage for each of them. Pat, who wore her
"dancing dress, "with a skirt cut to swing while she danced, was
already a four-time grandmother while Max was just a father when they
married. Today, she is a five-times great-great grandmother.
Pat said she did not graduate from high school but instead went to work as a
"Rosie the Riveter" during World War II, and therefore didn't go to a
prom. Max said his graduation from a New York City high school was in
1942, when America was in the midst of World War II, and "there was no
prom—they just issued out the diplomas."
The couple loves to dance. "I never had any lessons but during the
USO dancing time in World War II, you could learn a lot and meet a lot of
people," Pat said.
The oldest woman and the oldest man attending the JCC Senior Prom—Gertrude
Stein, 94, and Maury Rapkin, 88—said that they both attended high school
proms. Stein said she had grown up in Lehr, North Dakota, a town she
described as being so small that it did not even have a high school.
Notwithstanding that theirs was a Jewish family, which kept kosher, her parents
sent her to an Episcopalian high school in St. Paul, Minn. Her parents
advised her to "eat everything the other girls eat. The very first
night we had dinner, I asked the girl next to me, what we had, and she said, 'oh
those were pork chops.'"
Stein
said she was valedictorian of her high school class, and that she recalls her
prom of 1930 as having been a "very formal affair. We had a receiving
line, where you had to introduce your escort to your teachers and to your
parents. We had a wonderful orchestra and we danced. And this young
man whom I invited, he gave me a necklace that I wanted to wear tonight but it
didn't go with my dress. But I kept it because it was so precious."
The necklace did go beautifully with her prom dress, which she recalled as being
a pink georgette.
She recalled that at that prom, she had a dance card. "In fact, I
gave my dance card about a month ago to my granddaughter who was visiting here
from Florida. She had never heard of a dance card, where you would
exchange dances."
Was her date her future husband? "No," she laughed, "but it was
my high school love."
In fact, her future husband took her to a college prom at the University of
Minnesota, where he studied for a medical degree and she obtained a degree in
medical technology. "I designed the dress I wore—a pale green
dress—and I went straight from the dressmaker's house to the prom," she
recalled
"I had a wonderful time because my husband was the president of the medical
fraternity, Phil Delta Epsilon, so I got a lot of attention." She
still remembers them waltzing, her favorite dance.
How does the JCC Senior Prom stack up against the others?
"Well," she replied I think it is a wonderful thing. It is delightful
to see so many active seniors doing all kinds of dances. And they don't sit back
and say I am getting old. They are active, and, frankly, I used to go dancing
regularly until my eyes started to get bad. I moved here in 1991 and up
until then I used to go dancing twice a week."
Rapkin, the oldest man at the dance, is, even now, a twice-a-week dancer,
enjoying not only the dances at the JCC—which was emceed last night by Senior
Activities Director Melanie Rubin—but also those held at such diverse
locations as Viejas Indian Casino, North Park, Balboa Park, La Mesa and Chula
Vista.
He said he recognized two of the Pastel band members— keyboardist Hal Jellison
and saxophonist Bob Hinkle—from other dances he had attended, but said
he couldn't be certain whether he had heard pianist Barbara Mosley and
trumpeter Riz Brittan before.
His
own senior prom came in 1941 when he was graduating from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. His date was "a woman in a family my sister
had married into—really a nice person, comely looking—but I didn't feel I
was ready to get married." He said the dance was a rather tame
affair, for which he dressed in a rented tuxedo, she wore a formal gown, and
"I gave her a corsage.... To tell you how tame it was, there was no
alcohol, just soft drinks. There was just ballroom dancing, no lindies, no
charlestons..." At the time, that might have been a relief for Rapkin
because "I had just learned to dance."
At the Sunday afternoon senior prom, dance teacher Meeshi Sumayao of the YMCA
Firehouse in La Jolla Village demonstrated a Charleston Rueda and a Lindy for
the enthusiastic and nostalgic crowd. Joining him on stage were Julia
Farrell, Brooke Sanders, Judy Cunningham, Jannette Kutchins, Dan Redig, Brian
Remer and Sean McNiven, most of them his dance students.
Not only did the seniors have a chance to put their dancing shoes on, but
several of them won donated dinners-for-two at various local restaurants during
"opportunity drawings." Usually, it's a dinner date before
the prom, but this works too!.
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