For more than two decades, around this time every year, fathers, uncles and other male relatives, bring their best girls to the “Little Ladies Winter Dance” in Niles. Friday and Saturday, that tradition continued.
The event, at the Niles Park District’s Howard Leisure Center, drew a crowd of roughly 300 people over two nights for dancing, crafts, food, formal photos and the famous candy buffet – after a dinner of chicken tenders, pizza and mozzarella sticks.
The two-day dance is a Niles tradition that celebrates Valentine’s Day and childhood where kids, age 3 to 12, from around the community show up to mingle, run around and have a small taste of the formal life.
Event organizers say even they aren’t sure what makes the dance – at $60 per couple – such a hot ticket.
“We have the photos, we have a crafts table where the girls make bracelets and we have a candy buffet,” said Theresa Kaufhold, the recreation administrator.
The evening is spent, too, thinking of mom.
As Valentine’s Day nears, Lisa Wright, manning the crafts table, watched as a passel of girls quickly and carefully worked to dig out the best colorful beads to crowd onto a plastic band, crafting small token reminders of the evening.
“The girls love it,” Wright said. “They love designing bracelets. They’re making them for their mothers for Valentine’s Day.”
And for the girls, the event is a chance to play with their friends, grab candy and dance to Taylor Swift tunes. For the fathers, it’s a chance to spend time with other guys while they watch the kids play – this year a father-daughter treat a day or two before the Super Bowl.
“I think it’s tradition,” said Robin Brey, the park supervisor, who spent some time helping at the photo booth.
After 25 years, it’s just the thing families do in February, she said.
“We must be doing something right,” Brey said.
The fathers think so. One man, Tony Valle, said he attended with his daughter and several other girls from his family and it’s something the girls love doing every year. They wouldn’t miss the dance.
“We’ve been coming here for years,” he said. “The kids love it. (The Park District) does a really great job here. And my wife brings our boys to the mother-son dance.”
That’s in two weeks.
Each of the family events raises about $18,000 for the Park District, according to officials.
Jesse Wright is a freelancer.
