
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 19, 1993                   TAG: 9305190191
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WHEN PROM TURNED INTO FRIGHT NIGHT

Imagine: It's the night of the high-school prom, and your daughter has left with her date. She in her gown, he in his tuxedo - each with a corsage - they are the absolute snapshot of youth and promise as they wheel down the street in a newly waxed car.

Who knows how seriously they take your pleas? Don't drink. If you drink, let someone else drive. If there's no one else to drive, call me. It's a message that's been hammered at them for months.

There are open offers for cabs and tow trucks; invitations to booze-free parties; rumors about cops redoubling their road patrols; exhortations from peers, parents and teachers about the risks of drunken driving.

But this is an important night, a rite of passage in their lives. It's a night for release - for them and for you.

Last Saturday night at dusk, they went, finally free to recognize or ignore your advice.

The William Fleming High School prom crowd went to the Marriott; the Patrick Henry bunch, to the Sheraton.

They partied until midnight at each spot. And then a thousand kids or more piled into cars to drive cross-town to after-prom parties - Fleming's at Crossroads Mall; Patrick Henry's in the City Market Building.

Ted Shulkcum was driving from PH's prom at the Sheraton toward downtown at 12:15 a.m. when he heard the news on his police radio. There'd been a ferocious accident on U.S. 220. Shulkcum, a cop, is a resource officer at Patrick Henry.

You were already in bed, or close to it, though it's hard to sleep when not everyone is home. You could hear the sirens, too, and you tried to dismiss that fear.

"My first alert was when two students had come past the accident," said Elizabeth Lee, the PH principal. "They asked if any of our students were involved."

Mangled cars were smeared across the expressway.

When Shulkcum arrived at the after-prom party, it was Lee's first question. What did he know?

She had to ask, for herself, and on behalf of hundreds of parents who lay staring at their ceilings, listening to ticking clocks.

Fewer Fleming students knew of the crash, because their parties were on the north side of town, but word moved among them, too, that something horrid had happened.

Shulkcum couldn't learn anything. Police were still on the scene.

At 1:30 a.m., Gerald McDearmon left the Fleming prom. The assistant principal drove past the accident scene, still brightly illuminated with floodlights. "I don't know if I've ever seen anything quite like that," he said, and he prayed it wasn't a prom-goer.

"I couldn't stand the anxiety of not knowing if any of our children were involved," said Lee.

At 2:30 a.m., she and Shulkcum went to the Police Department. They waited there until 3 a.m., when they were told the victims were not high schoolers, not en route to or from a prom.

The news could hardly be called a relief. Three people died; one is gravely injured; a fifth will heal.

The prom crowds partied through 'til dawn Sunday, as the pall of grief settled on other homes and other parents.

by CNB