Free to good home: Life-sized fake whale

PALMER — As she flits from decoration to decoration, helping kids string up plastic sheeting or deciding how exactly to do the lighting, it’s hard not to be impressed with what Yvonne Marty managed to pull off.

Marty has spent the bulk of the winter coming up with a decorating scheme for Palmer High School’s prom. She’s been doing it as cheaply as possible, building decorations out of mainly donated or discarded materials.

“Did you see my pillars? Pizza boxes, dude! Those are pizza boxes!” she said of the white columns with square, pizza-box-shaped bases.

The goal is to make the whole place look like something out of the Lost City of Atlantis. Hence the columns, and also the sunken ship in one corner and the gigantic papier maché whale in another.

“Fifty pounds of flour I used,” she said of that one.

There’s also an octopus, some pretty sweet clamshells, seaweed-shaped centerpieces and a whole lot of silvery jellyfish — built from bags of chips —hanging from the ceiling.

Marty said she and her husband have a business that keeps her busy through the summer. Winters she usually joins a bunch of volunteer organizations. This recycled prom, though, has been her main focus this year. Her daughter is a junior at PHS and it’s tradition for the junior class to put on the prom for the seniors.

She said there was some resistance to the idea, even a student petition at one point insisting prom happen somewhere off campus. But opposition dissipated as prom night approached and kids got a good look at what she was up to in the gym.

The goal, she said, had been to make the prom more affordable. Tickets usually run to $50 a kid.

“We can do it ourselves and charge half the price,” she said.

Also, it keeps the dances in town, allowing kids to avoid driving back home on a slick, darkened highway in the middle of the night. Which is also good for local businesses that might want to cater to the prom crowd.

“I kind of want to get a tradition started of having them back in the schools,” Marty said.

So when it’s all said and done, what’s she going to do with those columns, that ship and that whale?

They could be yours if you want them, Marty said. She’s talked to a few organizations about giving them a good home, but hasn’t had any firm interest. They’re bulky things, not the sort of items a lot of folks have room for.

“It’s tough to find someone who wants to put it up for two months, three months,” she said.

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.