"Puff, the magic dragon, lived by the sea...." I not only can sing it, but every year around high school prom time the over-powering fragrance of Puff tissues fuses with that Peter, Paul, and Mary anthem from the '60s. I recall the Ursuline prom of 1963--my class's Junior prom and one that remains vivid in the mind of the class's day students.
Being a day student at a boarding school was a challenge. We sort of straddled three worlds--our school's, which very much was developed around the 24/7 resident culture; our homes', where we were expected to fulfill family obligations while also living up to the school's numerous after-class time commitments; and the world of our local peers. As children, my UA day student peers and I had developed friendships with lots of local kids through Scouting and other community activities. But now in high school it was difficult to retain friendships, especially with other girls who often regarded Ursuline, with its many attractive Latin American students, as competition for the local male population. In addition, some interpreted our choice to attend a private school as disdain for PHS and downright snobbishness. And it wasn't always easy within UA either. I remember the Monday morning my senior year when day students learned at 7:50 that we were having a College English mid-term over Beowulf and Chaucer at 8:00. The resident students had received the information over the weekend, but none of them chose to pass the word to a day student. That was OK, though: two of the top three grades were garnered by day students taking a mid-term as a pop quiz.
Day students in the Class of '64 were bright and creative and risk takers and incredibly persistent. Those traits, the fact that three of the five class officers were day students, and the happen-stance that our sponsor was way too busy to do her job helped the 1963 Ursuline prom become one of a kind. Early on, our sponsor, Sr. Barbara, confessed that she was just too busy to oversee our class projects and she knew we were mature and capable students and so, "Surprise me," she said. She actually said that, and we actually did.
Until 1963 Ursuline proms were always held in the Alumni Room (later called the Wicker Room) in the Convent itself. Just imagine trying to convince a guy to take you to a prom in a Convent. And then add to that a strongly held tradition that the nuns loved and the students and their dates loathed. Before the prom began, all gathered in a circle around the six foot tall statue of the Blessed Virgin (elevated even taller by a pedestal) in the rotunda of the Convent to say a prayer for purity. There were rumors that some of the local boys were going to boycott, and we definitely wanted something more sophisticated than the crepe paper affairs that had been the norm to this point. With no sponsor to ban the discussion, someone proposed the unthinkable: "Let's have the prom off campus."
I have no memory of who signed the contract for the armory (at the old location to the left of the main entrance to Wallace Park in Paola), but it had to have been a parent. What I do recall was all the construction we did in Moe Cole's garage. As a class we had decided on a theme--Oriental Evening--and we committed to constructing real prom decorations--none of that crepe paper stuff for us. We decided on two pagodas--one large enough for a band--and a bridge for an oriental garden. And then we had the challenge of covering lots of gun racks and recruiting posters. This last we left to our Latin American students who created beautiful wall hangings. For the big stuff, we moved into Moe's garage. Mrs. John Cole, the grandmother and guardian of our class member, Robbie Dugan, lived at 503 E. Miami at the time. Her free-standing garage abutted the alley and was within easy walking distance for day students, who ended up doing the brunt of the construction. And this is where Puff comes in.
Not having a tradition of proms with real, three-dimensional pieces, we didn't know about those tissue paper squares--Pomps is one brand name--that fill up chicken wire quickly. Instead, we thought we needed to make tissue--as in Kleenex--flowers. And we did--tens of thousands of them. As luck would have it, Puffs came on the market at that very time, and, in an effort to draw people from Kleenex, the manufacturer filled supermarket shelves with boxes for a dime. We bought out our town and the surrounding towns. (I can only imagine what Puffs marketing specialists thought when they got the feedback from Miami County, Kansas.) Soon Moe's garage smelled like a perfume factory, and we were, literally, up to our knees in tissue flowers. When the monumental size of the task became apparent to us, we recruited family, the entire student body of Ursuline, and the Ursuline Sisters, including Sr. Charles, the Mother Superior, to help us make flowers. Knitters stopped their knitting to make flowers; dads stopped their woodworking to make flowers. Even little brothers jumped in to help. To get the flowers attached to the roofs of the pagodas we needed lots of hands, so we started inviting boarders to our houses for weekends of work, pizza, and song, including the popular hootenanny hits, with "Puff" at the top of our list.
By the time prom rolled around everyone who was in on the flower making--most of the Catholic population of Paola by this time--knew of the prom plans--everyone except Sr. Barbara. When she finally did learn a week or so before the prom, "ballistic" doesn't begin to describe her reaction. "Sputtering" is closer. She was furious, livid, etc., etc. But we had a contract, plenty of parent sponsors, and hundreds of people with a hands-on commitment--thanks to the Puffs project--to see this prom through to a successful ending. After her flower-making sister Sisters talked her blood pressure back to normal, Sr. Barbara finally "consented," provided that we include the "Blessed Virgin" in the prom. The prayer for purity tradition had to remain.
We were aghast. This was going to be a prom with no guys. What were we going to do? That's when our creativity combined with our persistence to create just a wee bit of deception. One of us said, "That's fine, Sister. We'll have a statue in the oriental garden at the prom." And we did: one of our dad's six-inch high dashboard Mary's got plopped in the middle of a fern in our lovely garden that evening. As for the prayer--well, it seems that the Sisters driving Sr. Barbara to the prom were a little late getting started, so she never got to see whether we circled around the shine-in-the-dark Dashboard Madonna--or not.
