Pampered For Prom

When Hernando High guidance counselors called Briana Drayton to the school office, the 18-year-old senior wondered what she could have done wrong.

"I was scared," Drayton recalls. "They said, 'Let's go into this room and talk.'"

Drayton has a 3.8 grade point average, a spotless disciplinary record and is active at her church. All this in spite of losing her mother to breast cancer at the age of 12 and sharing the attention of her great-grandmother with her five older siblings.

A minute later Drayton found out those achievements are motivating a local club and two Brooksville businesses to give her the princess treatment for prom this year.

On Wednesday, Drayton stood in front of a full-length mirror at Patricia's Boutique in Brooksville admiring her reflection in a sparkly, floor-length gown. One sales associate showed her shoes while a seamstress made adjustments. Store owner Patricia Lambright held up dangly earrings for Drayton to size up.

"Do you feel like Cinderella yet?" Lambright asked.

Drayton, who friends and guidance counselors describe as shy and modest, flashed a brilliant smile and nodded.

The Cinderella treatment is now an annual act of community service on the part of Lambright and the Junior Service League of Brooksville.

For three years, they've donated a brand new prom dress, shoes, jewelry and two prom tickets to a Hernando High school student selected by guidance counselors. It's a package worth several hundred dollars, but the young women are worth it, Lambright said.

"We wanted the young lady to come in for a once-in-a-lifetime experience for her prom," Lambright said.

The requirements: good grades, upstanding behavior and a commitment to community. The recipients also have overcome some kind of challenge.

Drayton has it all, said Janice Greene, a guidance counselor at Hernando High.

"She's a very deserving young lady," Greene said. "I think she has a very bright future."

And a difficult past. When she was 6 months old, the state ruled that Drayton and her five siblings should live with their great-grandmother Margaret, who raised all of them.

"She was a strong woman," Drayton said.

Though they didn't live with her, the loss of their mother was still a difficult blow, she said.

Drayton still has a relationship with her father, who had planned to help her with prom expenses. She also is close to her grandmother, Margaret's daughter.

All of them deserve thanks, Drayton said. But Drayton says she also found guidance and strength in God. About the time she started high school, she joined Grace World Outreach Church, where she kicks up heels as a member of the worship dance team.

She said she feels confident the kindness of her prom donators is the sign of a higher power, and has plans to become a minister after graduation.

"I really just want to thank God for blessing me, and I want to give Him the honor for it," she said.

Drayton's prom experience on April 4 will be a girls' night out: She's going with two girlfriends, after a trip to Debbie's Hair Gallery in Brooksville, which contributes hair styling and nail treatment.

She'll be thinking of her great-grandmother, she said.

"I think she would be proud of me, of the person I've become," she said.