After Two Years, Falmouth's After-Prom Makes Comeback
After a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic, the Falmouth After-Prom Celebration is back on track and is gearing up for another robust all-nighter of entertainment, games, prizes, music and food.
Falmouth Together We Can president Kathleen Jespersen, who also serves as After-Prom co-chairwoman, and board member and former After-Prom co-chairwoman Linda Hamilton recounted the early days of After-Prom, when Ms. Hamilton and Ms. Jespersen were just two concerned moms who wanted to change a dangerous norm.
“I had two older daughters who had gone to prom, and it was kind of loose,” Ms. Hamilton said. “They’d all go out to dinner somewhere and then they’d show up back at the high school or wherever for the prom at eight o’clock.”
After the prom, however, was when the parents’ worries peaked. Underaged drinking and unsupervised parties were the norm, as some high schoolers felt that after-prom was their chance to celebrate and get inebriated.
“It was just a nightmare, it really was a nightmare,” Ms. Hamilton said. “So my thing was, we really need to do something about this after-prom, and Kathleen was on the same page, so we said, ‘Let’s, let’s try to get this going.’ ”
Things started coming together in 1993-94, and the first After Prom—called “Celebration ‘95”— was held in May 1995. It was held every year after that until 2020, when COVID halted everything in its tracks.
That is, until now.
“For us, this is almost like starting over, because these kids were freshmen. So they really don’t know much about the After-Prom,” Ms. Jespersen said. “And it took us a good 10 years to change the norm and Falmouth.”
Changing the norm was and still is the name of the game for After-Prom, but it is more than that: it is about protecting the teens, the women said, and about giving them a gift from the town that shows that they are appreciated and valued.
“Instead of saying we’re trying to keep them from drinking and drugs, we’d say it’s a gift from the town because we cherish our teenagers,” Ms. Hamilton said.
The first year was a difficult one, with the two co-chairs having to learn the ropes of how to throw an after-prom party along the way. But it was a success, with nearly 400 students attending to see the inflatable sumo wrestling and Velcro walls.
Celebration ‘96 was as big of a success, especially for parents. A letter to then-FHS Principal Paul V. Cali from a mother dated May 6, 1996, that has been preserved in the Post-Prom Gala Celebration book clearly paints a picture of an event that did what it set out to do: give attendees a safe alternative to the usual post-prom shenanigans that held potential for real tragedy.
“I know that I speak for innumerable parents when I say that I am so grateful that this event has happened for the last two years,” wrote Mary Bradley. As a parent of a 22-year-old who attended two Falmouth proms, she said she spent those two sleepless nights worrying about her son, who stayed out all night.
But when her daughter arrived at the Gus Canty Community Center for Celebration ‘96, she wrote, she was able to sleep soundly.
“I don’t mean to sound overly dramatic about all of this, but the truth of the matter is that a group of concerned parents, who shared the same concerns that so many of us have about the safety and well-being of our youth… managed to work miracles.”
Ms. Jespersen said the event was a success if for no other reason than that it really happened at all. But as teens and families learned what the event was, the more appeal it had, and the more it grew. Parents shared their own stories of after-prom activities and commended the group’s mission to provide a safe alternative. Other towns wanted to imitate it and looked to the group of ladies of Falmouth Together We Can for help.
“We traveled the entire Cape, but then we got calls from off-Cape, up near Boston,” Ms. Jespersen said. “People invited us to bring our book and tell them how we did this… and the kids are like, ‘Can we do it like Falmouth?’ But nobody does it like Falmouth.”
After-Prom 2022 is shaping up to be a comeback celebration, complete with food, raffle prizes, music, and a variety of entertainment options ranging from an “adrenaline rush” obstacle course to a hypnotist.
“Months ago, we were having Zoom board meetings and saying, ‘Is this going to go, is it not going to go?’ We didn’t really know. Then we said we need to push ahead because if we don’t, this is just going to flop and it’ll never revive again,” Ms. Hamilton said.
With the amount of time, effort, and fundraising that it takes to pull off the After-Prom, planning starts early and is a lot of work for the entire committee involved. But for Ms. Hamilton and Ms. Jespersen, the sheer positivity of the event itself is what keeps them going.
“It’s such a positive thing,” Ms. Hamilton said. “I just remember how much fun the kids had.”
The attendees remember how much fun they had, too. Denise Trimble is now a mother but remembers her nights at After-Prom back in high school.
“I went to the prom sophomore, junior and senior years and all three years I went to the After-Prom,” Ms. Trimble said. “I just remember having a lot of fun. I remember a lot of kids went. It was just nice to have an option besides what the other options were and we all know what the other options were—drinking, going to people’s houses, and I really wanted no part of that. It was so great to have a space to go.”
Ms. Trimble’s most memorable After-Prom moment, however, is when she won the second-biggest prize of the night during her senior year in 1998. She won a big Rubbermaid tote packed with all kinds of things that someone would need for college, including a toolbox, quarters for laundry and phone cards.
Ms. Trimble said that the number-one prize that year was a car, which she did not win. She does, however, remember the girl who did and happened to recognize her when they saw each other in 2019 at the Falmouth Together We Can Pre-Prom Family Funventure, an event the organization put on to spread the word and give families a glimpse at both After-Prom and its umbrella organization.
“I took my two boys… and I actually saw the girl who had won the car there with her child,” Ms. Trimble said. “So it was kind of funny—here we were almost 20 years later with our own kids, the two big winners back in 1998.”
That exact scenario is something Ms. Jespersen thinks about often.
“I think of the kids who came back to Falmouth to raise their kids,” she said. “It meant so much to me when they have kids to be able to say, ‘Well, you know what I did after my prom?’ It gives them another reason to come back to Falmouth. It’s cool, too, for parents to say to their kids, ‘Well, this is what I did,’ and then hopefully get involved.”
Getting the community involved has been crucial to the success of After-Prom and luckily, local support is plentiful. Business and individuals alike have been great, Ms. Hamilton said, about supporting the After-Prom efforts and donating money or raffle prizes, which are given out at the very end of the night—between 4 and 5 AM—to the teens who stick it through to the end.
Staying up all night with friends is something Falmouth High School Interim Principal Thomas McManamon looks back on fondly, having attended the After-Prom as a high schooler himself.
“I think, in the moment, it was billed and lived up to being a fun overnight,” he said. “When you’re 16, 17, 18 years old, the idea of staying up all night long with your friends has a certain romance to it that sounds really appealing. Eating free food is really appealing, playing on big bouncy houses with the potential to win money or even a car… all of those things together were very exciting and just seemed like a great way to spend a night.”
Now with nearly 20 years in education under his belt and three daughters of his own, the oldest of whom is approaching prom age, Mr. McManamon said he has a deep appreciation for the efforts put in by the After-Prom crew.
“What a wonderful thing it is to have the community gather around the students with an eye on not only giving them a fun night but keeping everyone safe,” he said. “The time people put in, the adults, many of them parents but many of them not, the time and effort and the donations of business and community members, it’s really stunning and it’s a sign of what a great place Falmouth is.”
The group responsible for After-Prom is small, but is always accepting extra help, the former co-chair duo said. In past years, the group has had almost a cathartic experience planning the After-Prom, as it helped them heal from various individual traumas and hardships in a communal way that helped give back to those most precious to them: the children of Falmouth.
“We really bonded those first few years with the other mothers,” Ms. Hamilton said. “And in that, when we’d talk back and forth about kids and how we were dealing with things, it was really helpful… Falmouth was really known as a big drinking town back then; it’s maybe still known that way. It was changing a norm. It takes time and we were so afraid that if we let it go another year, it might be impossible to get back again.”
“We got to that point,” Ms. Jespersen said. “The norms were changed.”
The After-Prom will take place after Falmouth High School’s Prom on May 7 at the Gus Canty Community Center. It is free to attend for all Falmouth resident juniors and seniors whether or not they attend the prom.
To learn more information, visit www.falmouthtogetherwecan.org/celebrations.