After months of practices and fundraising, junior Lily Moore participated in the 86th annual White and Red Debutante Ball for the Legion of Young Polish Women, following in the footsteps of her mother.
“During the night of the ball I kind of looked over and [my mom] was recording and crying, and it was a really intimate, cute moment,” Moore said.
The White and Red Ball is the Legion of Young Polish Women’s largest fundraiser. The Legion of Young Polish Women is a nonprofit organization founded on Sept. 2, 1939, after the start of World War II.
“The purpose of Legion is to support charitable, cultural and educational causes, so all the money raised during this ball actually supports our mission,” said Kathy Lesny Evans, co-chair of the White and Red Ball. “All of our members are volunteers that help put on this ball as well. And so everything raised ends up going 100 percent back to the community.”
The best part of the debutante ball is watching the girls blossom into young ladies who are self-confident as they are presented into society, Evans said.
“Coming to us, these girls are shy, and they don’t really know about Legion,” said Evans. “They don’t know much about traditions or Polish culture in the sense of what we teach them. So I think of it as kind of like a rose blossoming.”
According to Lily Moore’s mother Renata Moore, Lily’s escort was someone that was assigned to her.
“You can sign up your daughter to be a debutante, but you can also sign up your son to be an escort,” said Renata Moore. “So she had a senior boy that flew in every month from Florida to be her escort.”
Girls who were debutantes in previous years become post-debutantes, known as debutantes in red.
“[The debutantes’] escorts walk in with their debs in red, and they do a choreographed dance together, and then towards the end, the girls are handed over to their escort,” said Renata Moore. “It’s kind of symbolic. You’re presented to society.”
According to Lily Moore, after all of the other fundraising events that they do before the ball, the final fundraising event takes place at the ball.
“The last amount of time you have to fundraise is when we have these roses that you sell during dinner,” said Lily Moore. “So we were selling roses and we were running around the whole room and [my escort’s] job was to sit there with the money in an envelope and follow me and I was just going everywhere.”
Seeing the people there and everyone who was supporting her when she went to the middle of the room for her big bow was an exciting moment, Lily Moore said.
“Every practice we practice our bow, that’s our big moment,” said Lily Moore. “And every practice [my mom] was there cheering me on, literally, she’d be clapping and everyone else would be silent. It was such a good moment and she was just so proud.”