Students, helpers have homecoming to remember

MIDVALE — Youth groups, a rock 'n' roll band, teachers and residents came together last week to give Jordan Valley School students with severe, multiple disabilities a homecoming dance to remember.

But perhaps the service most impacted the servants.

"It's such a huge thing for them, but ... it benefits people like us more," said Adam Bullough, a freshman at Westminster College who volunteered, with about 90 other teens in a church youth group, to help put on the dance and boogie with students at the Midvale school.

"They're such a great example to us. ... They're never jealous, they're never rude, they're truly the kindest people I've met in my life. If we can be more like them, we can be overall better people."

Jordan Valley School's high school-age students and alumni donned dressy duds to dance the night away at their 26th annual homecoming celebration Thursday. A couple hundred, some using wheelchairs, some with medical conditions, typically attend, teacher specialist Jenni Eyre said.

"We get kids who come back who are now in their 50s," she said. "It's really fun to see the kids have a special night that's for them."

For years Brighton High's LDS Seminary students have volunteered to help put on the dance. This year, volunteers were 12- through 18-year-olds from the Willow Creek 1st and 6th wards of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

"The students who come to participate with our kids don't let them sit on the sidelines, idle. They really pull them in, engage them and help them participate," Principal Rita Bouillon said. "There's such a good energy."

Youth group students learned to dance with students in wheelchairs, using walkers or who carried oxygen tanks, said 6th Ward Young Women's President Marge Deeds. She and other parent volunteers helped decorate for the dance, which included a live band, garlands, Santa Claus — even a balloon drop for the homecoming king and queen.

"There is not another gig the whole year that even comes close to what this one's like. The kids make us feel like rock stars," said Jay Christensen, whose band, Family and Friends, has played at the dance for 23 years.

"You go away from it grateful for what you have and just hoping that for one night, for a few hours, you can make them forget the challenges they have to face and their parents have to face and their families have to face," he said. "People in this school are jewels like you'd find almost nowhere else."

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