Thanks to collection effort of Princeton sisters, girls at Appalachian high school to be properly outfitted
By: David Campbell
On Saturday night, more than 50 girls from Whitley County High School in Kentucky located in Appalachia and one of the poorest counties in the nation attended their senior prom dressed in designer gowns, thanks to sisters Liz and Carter Haughton, a junior and sophomore, respectively, at Princeton High School.
On April 21, Liz, 17, and Carter, 15, and classmates Hannah Barton and Anna Sweemer with the Haughtons’ father, Dan, and Anna’s father, Jon, driving left Princeton in two SUVs stuffed to the gills with 145 evening gowns for the 12-hour drive to southeast Kentucky.
The Haughton sisters were following the example set by their father and mother, Nell, who collected prom dresses for Whitley County girls in 1991 and 1992. They collected donations from classmates and family friends to provide prom dresses for junior and senior girls in one of the poorest regions in the United States.
"We knew the number of girls who requested dresses and their sizes, and our original goal was to collect 100 dresses so that every girl would have a choice in her size range," said Carter. "Once word got around, however, we ended up collecting 125 new and nearly new dresses and over $1,700 in cash, which we used to buy 20 larger-size long gowns."
The trip to Kentucky took about 48 hours, most of them spent on the road to get the girls back to Princeton in time for the start of school Monday morning. But the time they shared that Saturday afternoon at the high school helping the Whitley County girls select and try on their dresses was worth the trouble it took to get there.
"The girls warmed up to them," Mr. Haughton said. "It was touching to see how girls that seemingly have very little in common they were from different parts of the country, from different economic groups in fact have very much in common."
When the caravan from Princeton arrived at the Whitley County High School, there already were about two dozen girls who had lined up nearly two hours earlier to select their dresses.
The four PHS girls arranged the dresses on five clothes racks by size, and the Whitley County girls were assigned numbers that were drawn at random to determine the order of selection. Senior girls got first priority.
"One of the first dresses selected was an elegant long black dress with black feathers at the neckline," Liz said. "The girl who chose it really looked beautiful in that dress, and when she came out to the gym to model it, her mother got up from her seat and rushed over to her daughter.
"When they hugged, the mother began to cry because she was so proud and happy for her daughter," she continued. "I’ll never forget that moment."
By 5 p.m. that Saturday, every girl had selected a dress 66 in all and another 21 dresses were left for girls to select for future proms.
The prom Saturday night was for seniors, who accounted for nearly 50 of the 66 girls. The remaining girls who selected gowns were juniors, some of whom attended the prom as dates of seniors, while the rest were allowed to pick out dresses for next year’s prom.
The Haughton sisters also recently gave another dozen dresses to Trenton Central High School students, and some remaining dresses they collected will be put toward their efforts to provide prom dresses at two more high schools next year.
Their parents, who inspired them with similar efforts 15 years ago, got the idea to collect prom dresses for Kentucky girls after reading an article in The Wall Street Journal about poverty in Appalachia.
The story of a woman whose oldest daughter, then a high school senior, had never owned a new dress in her life and so didn’t even bother to ask her mother for something as extravagant as a dress for the prom, moved the Haughtons to action.
They collected 122 prom dresses in 1991, which they delivered to Whitley County in person, and an additional 100 dresses the following year.
"They’d heard about it all their lives," Mr. Haughton said of his daughters. "They will be going to their own proms this year and next year, and they thought it would be fun to do something they’d enjoy doing and which would help others."
Liz and Carter coordinated their efforts through Margie Centers of the Whitley County High School Youth Services Center, which helps the poorest students become more mainstreamed within the school.
"A number of our students come from homes with no running water, and they used to arrive at school without showers and in dirty clothes," Ms. Centers said. "Unfortunately, their poor hygiene often led to ridicule by other students, and as a result, they frequently dropped out of school early."
Through a federal grant, the Youth Services Center provides clothing, laundry services and toiletries to these students, and arranges for them to take showers each morning at the school.
But the center’s budget, while providing for essential needs of the students, does not allow for items like prom gowns, and so the Haughton sisters’ efforts were welcomed.
"They were a real godsend," Ms. Centers said. "None of these girls would have been able to afford a nice dress otherwise."

