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Senior wills and junior prophesies
By Tim Carroll
It is prom weekend in Allen, Texas, and that means big business for hairdressers, restaurants and limousine services. Like graduation, the senior prom is a high school rite of passage that most of us have experienced once or twice.
In some ways, the prom hasn't changed a bit. Kids still dress up, enjoy a nice dinner, go dancing and stay out much later than normal. Then again, speaking with some former students and teachers, I would say the Allen High School prom has come a long, long way.
For many years, Allen High School's prom was actually called the Junior-Senior Banquet, according to Jill (Enloe) Dietz, who graduated in 1975. "The tradition was that the juniors would raise money to pay for the seniors and then both classes would attend the banquet," she said.
"The mothers did most of the preparation and food service director Lois Curtis coordinated it all," she said. "Everyone came out because they knew it supported the senior's banquet each year. Of course, the town's population was probably less than 1,000 at the time."
Seniors Niki Keramat and Tyler Johnston will be attending the Allen High School prom at the Allen Event Center this Saturday. They will be joined by almost 1,000 classmates. The couple is part of a group of 20 and will be riding in a limo to a nice steakhouse and sushi restaurant before attending the prom around 9 p.m.
In comparison, Honey (Bankhead) Gray and her date attended the 1974 Junior-Senior Banquet at the Hilton Inn Hotel in Dallas with about 75 students. There were 41 seniors graduating that year.
"A tradition that I remember from the banquets was the senior wills and junior prophesies," Gray said. "Seniors would stand up and bequeath all sorts of funny things to the juniors. Then juniors would predict the future for seniors. It was meant to be in good fun but could get rough at times."
Allen's lack of hotels led to proms being scheduled in Dallas, and later Richardson and Plano. Sonya (Knight) Pitcock remembers her 1997 prom being held at a downtown Dallas hotel and then everyone heading to the Swingin' D Ranch for the after prom party.
Ella Jo Adams recalled one year that the prom was almost cancelled. "We received a call from the Fairmont Hotel that our room for the prom had been taken over by secret service staff for President Gerald Ford's overnight stay at the hotel," she said. "We were eventually allowed to use a different space at the Fairmont. We even got to see the President arrive in his limo that evening in April of 1976."
An interesting fact about early Allen "proms" was that underclassmen were not allowed to eat dinner with the group. A junior who took a sophomore to the banquet would eat dinner inside while the underclassmen sat outside the banquet hall. They could join the group when the dancing began. At the same time, most of Allen ISD's faculty and their spouses or guests attended the banquet along with the upperclassmen. Mrs. Adams helped break down the tradition in 1967 so that all guests could enjoy the banquet and the emphasis was more on the students.
Asked why he was looking forward to the prom, Johnston said, "It's exciting because it's only seniors. It is our event -- our chance to get together and start saying goodbye. It will be great."
In a way, the prom hasn't changed in years.
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