No Rain Dances, Please

By Jeninne Lee-St. John

NO RAIN DANCES, PLEASE

As Mardi Gras showed, Hurricane Katrina couldn't dampen New Orleans' spirit. Now volunteers nationwide are working to keep the party going for prom season. Denise Marhoefer, an Indiana woman who is coordinating a national fund-raising and gown-collecting drive for the Jesuit high school proms in May, will fly in flowers and 70 hairstylists. Maryland's Marisa West, 17, below, gathered more than 2,700 dresses for six schools in Louisiana and Mississippi, including New Orleans' Cabrini High. One Cabrini girl who picked a dress last week was Ryan Lefrere, 17, whose grandmother had been planning to stitch her gown, as she did last spring. "But," says Lefrere, "she lost her sewing machine in the flood."