ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, May 30, 1996 TAG: 9605300081
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: DALEVILLE
SOURCE: MATT CHITTUM STAFF WRITER
THE PROM PROMISE wasn't just a safety pledge this year. Lord Botetourt students clinched the championship again - as a gift to their injured teacher.
At Lord Botetourt High School, the Prom Promise program is no joke. The student committee excels at rounding up remarkable participation in the effort to get students to sign a pledge not to drink and drive on prom night.
The school perennially wins its region in a statewide Prom Promise competition; two years ago it was the state runner-up, and last year it was state champion.
But this year was tougher - and sweeter - than ever before.
In December, English teacher Dee Sheffer, for six years the Prom Promise committee's inspirational staff sponsor, broke her legs, a vertebra and nine ribs when she plowed into the rear of a slow-moving tractor-trailer on U.S. 460.
That left the seven-student committee without its longtime leader. Unable to find another faculty sponsor, the students decided to go it alone.
Inspired by their decision to dedicate their efforts to their fallen leader, they became the first repeat state champions in Prom Promise history.
"We knew we wouldn't let her down if we didn't win," committee member Robert Pauley said. "But by winning, we lifted her up."
Wednesday, representatives from Nationwide Insurance, which created the Prom Promise program, were at the school to present the students their award.
And for the first time since her crash, Sheffer was there, too, greeted by hugs from students, teachers and custodians.
Sheffer sat in a chair on the gymnasium floor before the students filed in for the assembly. Smiling and getting a little misty-eyed, she thumbed through a scrapbook the students have to keep as part of the competition.
But when she got to the page that read "In Honor of Mrs. Sheffer" at the top, she couldn't hold back. On the page were pictures of students planting a tree in Sheffer's name, along with the tag from the pink dogwood.
"Oh my G...,'' she started to say, but she choked on her words. She silenced herself with a hand to her mouth.
When the students were planting that tree, Sheffer, 41, was in constant therapy, trying to learn to walk again.
It was a cold morning when she crashed. She was taking her two children to Colonial Elementary School when she came up behind a diesel truck struggling along in her lane. By the time she saw it, it was too late to avoid a collision.
Sheffer doesn't remember the crash or the subsequent 10 days, but she remembers the anger and frustration that came from being bedridden. Her children were injured, but healed quickly. As she got better, she began to think more about school, but going back was a long way off.
The students, meanwhile, were struggling to find a leader. A couple of teachers agreed to help out part time, but no one had Sheffer's devotion.
With no teacher to stay with them, the committee couldn't meet in the school after class. Richard Pauley - a Nationwide Insurance agent and the father of twins Robert and Michael Pauley, who are on the committee - let the students meet at his house.
Senior Stephanie Gill called the effort "totally last-minute." They pulled together a hand-holding show of unity that stretched around the outside of the school. They went class to class to sign up students who didn't sign up in the halls. And, to raise money, they held a cow pie contest, in which students could "buy" pieces of the football field in the hope that a cow set loose on the field would "fertilize" their piece.
Sheffer "wasn't there, but she was with us," Michael Pauley said. "She was still motivating us. We put long hours into this, and doing it for her kept us going."
"It made you feel like you were really working for a goal," Brooke McMahan said.
Their efforts paid off with a remarkable 100 percent participation among the school's more than 900 students.
"How often do you see that kind of participation in anything?'' asked Cham Light, a representative from Nationwide's state headquarters in Lynchburg.
For its victory, the school gets gift certificates from various local businesses, as well as $3,500 to use at it sees fit. In the past, the students have put in a salad bar in the cafeteria and established scholarships. Botetourt County's other high school, James River High, won the regional championship and was runner-up in its division for the state.
Sheffer, who still walks with a limp and can't stand for long periods, didn't expect to come back to school until the fall. But on prom weekend, she saw Richard Pauley in Western Sizzlin'.
"He said it was an omen that we were going to win again," Sheffer said. A few days later, the good news came, and Sheffer told Pauley on the phone that she would come to the assembly.
"It made my day, my week, my month, my year ... to know that they care so deeply about something so important," Sheffer said.
"I don't care what they say to each other in the halls. You can't convince me that in their hearts these kids think it's cool to drink and die."
LENGTH: Medium: 98 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ERIC BRADY/Staff. Lord Botetourt High School teacher Deeby CNBSheffer, injured in a car crash in December, gets a hug from junior
Monica Stevens before Wednesday's assembly. The school was awarded
its second state Prom Promise title - the first repeat in the
program's history. color.