Missing Milestones: Just in time for senior prom, ‘it was like there was no COVID’
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Missing Milestones
An occasional series on how COVID-19 is changing life for one Kentucky High School senior.
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Editor’s Note: This is the fifth story in an occasional series on how COVID-19 is changing life for one Kentucky High School senior.
In a white sequined dress paired with hot pink Crocs instead of high heels, wedged between her date and a group of friends, Macy Dungan posed for senior prom pictures.
Droves of Frankfort High School prom-goers were clustered behind the Kentucky Capitol this Saturday night in mid-May, trailed by gaggles of friends and family members clutching cameras and talking over each other. No one wore masks, people breathed in each other’s faces, and social distancing was a far-off, hazy memory.
It was a sight that, even a few months ago, would’ve been inconceivable. When COVID-19 first roiled Kentucky in March of 2020 and the state began enacting restrictions to keep people apart in order to blunt wildfire-like spread of the virus, Macy avoided seeing others outside her family. Friends became radioactive, and when she was around them, she tried to keep her distance; all of them carried germs and some, she later found out, coronavirus.
“I’ve been very cautious. I do not let people drink after me. If I don’t know where they’ve been, I’m not being around you, because I hate quarantining,” she said with disdain in late April, a few weeks after getting her initial dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Macy had to quarantine twice last year because of exposure.
Since then, the 17-year-old, like millions of other fully-vaccinated people across the country, has cautiously let her guard down. A toe in the water of normalcy escalated into a running cannonball. This scene behind the Capitol, and prom later that night, was full immersion.
People took turns shouting, corralling and arranging the teenagers to get the perfect shot, loudly commanding them to stand still and smile. “It’s like herding cats,” Macy’s grandfather quipped as he watched from the back.
The sister of one of Macy’s friends did her makeup that morning, and she got her hair done at a salon in Georgetown that afternoon. She suffered an ankle injury playing softball a few weeks earlier that kept her from finishing the season and left her in a boot. She swapped the bulky boot for an inconspicuous ankle brace for the dance. The Crocs, which she had to special order, were equal parts a fashion statement and necessary for comfort.
A phone rang.
“Oh, shoot, I was supposed to FaceTime Stephanie,” said Macy’s grandmother, Paula Collins, whom everyone calls Granna. Granna is crafty and entrenched in her granddaughter’s life. Over the past year, she designed and sewed hundreds of FHS-themed coronavirus masks for students and teachers, and recently helped the seniors make their graduation t-shirts. Her house has an open-door policy, and Macy’s friends know it. In the weeks leading up to prom, many dropped by with prom dresses for Granna to make alterations.
“Sorry, I forgot!” Granna said loudly into her phone at her daughter, one of Macy’s aunts, who couldn’t be there in person. “Macy and Nate, one more time, get over here,” Granna said as she held up the phone for her daughter to see. Nate, Macy’s ex-boyfriend who’s now her boyfriend, again, sighed and smiled. His navy blue suit was accented by a pink tie to match Macy’s Crocs. “Oh my!” the aunt said through the speaker.
Outside of returning to in-person school, which Macy and her cohorts did in March, and the commencement of her softball season after an almost two-year hiatus, senior prom was the first school-wide in-person event district administrators had allowed in the 2020-2021 school year.
Heeding advice from Gov. Andy Beshear last year to avoid in-person learning, the Frankfort school district shuttered its buildings and canceled extracurriculars, turning Macy’s final year in high school two-dimensional. She agreed to let the Herald-Leader shadow that experience. Class time and rites of passage happened over a computer screen. Her junior prom was canceled, and both of her senior homecomings were virtual; students, some of whom were quarantined at the time, danced alone in their bedrooms over Google hangouts.
In recent months, as vaccines have become more available, the virus started to recede across Kentucky. Planning an in-person prom and graduation began to seem feasible, especially since both were to take place outdoors: prom was at Prodigy Vineyards in Versailles, and graduation was on the front lawn of the high school, a stone’s throw from the state Capitol.
As an added bonus for FHS seniors, on May 13, two days before prom, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it was safe for fully vaccinated people to remove their masks in most indoor and outdoor settings. Beshear upheld that recommendation in Kentucky, saying the statewide mask mandate now only applied to unvaccinated people. In effect since July of 2020, Beshear plans to repeal the mask mandate in its entirety on June 11.
It was an abrupt shift that only solidified the normalcy of the night. Later that evening at the dance, fully-vaccinated staff, teachers and students were given the green light to forgo masks, and most did.
‘Just regular stuff’
Squirt bottles of hand sanitizer were arranged next to individually wrapped bags of chips and cookies on a refreshments table near the dance floor, where Panic! At The Disco’s “High Hopes” was blaring.
It was 8 p.m. at the Versailles vineyard, and high schoolers were just beginning to trickle into the dance. Each student was given a gift bag when they handed over their tickets, which included a 2021 prom-emblazoned mask, sure to be stuffed into drawers and discovered years later as a relic of the weirdest year of high school on record.
None of the teachers milling about were wearing masks — virtually all were vaccinated in March. But students donned them as they arrived, mostly, it seemed, out of habit.
Normally, FHS’ proms are in the gym of a nearby church and 70, maybe 90 students buy tickets. This year set a school record, with more than 130 tickets sold.
Julia Harmon, an FHS art teacher who helped plan the dance, thinks so many teens wanted to come because they’re desperate to socialize. “They haven’t had anything together yet,” she said over the music. “It’s the first normal thing they’ve done in almost two years.”
That’s been a challenge for teachers, who have struggled to keep tabs on students they can’t track down in the hallway each day. Ms. Harmon remarked on seeing one of her students walk into the dance whom she hadn’t seen since March of last year. In a week, that student, and the rest of the seniors, would graduate, having spent roughly half of their high school experience not in the school building. “That’s a really crazy thing,” Ms. Harmon said.
To get into the dance, students had to drive up a winding gravel driveway and walk past a barn stocked with farm animals, some of which were wandering around the grounds when the dance started. Two students trying to pet a horse ambling nearby had to be fetched by a teacher and told to return to the dance. A sign on a nearby fence warned, “Caution: All our horses bite. Be careful.” Farm cats sauntered past girls in formal gowns.
Macy and her clan arrived fashionably late, having eaten dinner in Lexington. They mingled with classmates near the entrance before posing for more photos in a makeshift photo booth teachers set up. Gold streamers nailed to a tall fence served as the backdrop. Top hats, glasses and other props were nearby, next to a sign, “Welcome to the party.”
As twilight set in, students got more courageous and began filling the dance floor to sing to Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the U.S.A.,” which was released when many of them were 5- and 6-years-old. Some jumped on stage to dance. Masks came off, people hugged and screamed and high-fived and danced close. One student took a hit off his vape pen. A few couples kissed. It was a real prom.
As Macy put it, “there was just a lot of regular stuff, and we weren’t freaking out the whole time about having to wear a mask. It was like there was no COVID.”
To Be Continued: Our Missing Milestones series will continue with occasional installments throughout the 2020-21 school year.
This story was originally published June 8, 2021 at 10:04 AM.
