What do Ghostbusters, Wonder Woman and Superman have in common with debutantes and Young Men of Distinction?
Nothing, save for this one evening in June when Comic Con and Le Bal de Ballet were taking place simultaneously, in venues a stone’s throw apart.
It made for an interesting moment when random super heroes in full costume, walking from the Colorado Convention Center to cars parked in the Denver Performing Arts Complex garage, needed to negotiate a galleria filled with debutantes, Young Men of Distinction and several hundred parents, friends and extended family done up in evening gowns and tuxedos.
And it was tough to tell which group found the other more amusing.
Chaired by Christian Reid, Le Bal de Ballet is the Denver Ballet Guild’s signature fundraiser. The money that it raised in 2015 enabled the guild to award $85,000 in grants to nonprofit dance companies in the metro area, to give $21,000 in prizes at the guild-sponsored Young Dancers Competition and treat 6,000 elementary-age school children to Showcase of Dance performances.
Reid’s daughter, Caroline, was one of the 32 debutantes in the Class of 2016. She delivered the commencement address at Kent Denver School, where she had been all-school president, a member of the Cum Laude Society and an Academic All-American Distinguished Scholar in field hockey. She will attend Baylor University on a President’s Gold Scholarship.
Fellow deb McKinley Hamilton is one of only 59 girls in the United States to receive the Iota Sigma Pi Outstanding Young Woman in Chemistry Award. A graduate of St. Mary’s Academy, where she played varsity tennis, was president of the Outdoor Club and served three years in student government, Hamilton follows the footsteps of her mother, Sarah Buettner Hamilton, a 1988 Le Bal de Ballet debutante.
Isabelle Fries, whose father, Michael Fries, is Liberty Global’s president and CEO, is a champion swimmer who has broken 32 records and holds four state championships in breast stroke. Like her father, she has an affinity for music. He is lead vocalist in The Moderators and she sings with a band called Shades of Blue. She also traveled to Uganda to perform with the Flobots at an HIV/AIDS awareness concert that was part of a music festival hosted by the Denver-based Global Livingston Institute.
Charlie McDonald, one of the 32 Young Men of Distinction, is an award-winning songwriter who played varsity football and baseball at Valor Christian High School. In 1988, his father, Jim McDonald, was a member of the inaugural YMOD class; his mom, Stacey, was a Le Bal de Ballet debutante in 1986.
Andrew and Blake Parsons, twin sons of Mary and Donald Parsons, also were YMODs. They served as co-captains of the Kent Denver School tennis team and were inducted into the Colorado Tennis Hall of Fame. In addition, Blake traveled to New York in April to deliver the student keynote address on genetics at a national STEM conference while Drew, lead guitarist of Kent’s award-winning Quincy Avenue Rhythm and Blues Band, co-founded a website design company.
National Merit Scholarship recipient Will Flanagan was National Honor Society president at East High School, where he received departmental awards in science, world language and mathematics; Trinity College awarded its Kelter Scholarship to Kent Denver grad Sarah Lawrence for her “academic vitality and personal character.” His teachers and fellow seniors at Regis Jesuit High School selected Davis McDonald as the recipient of a Raider Man award, honoring those who are outstanding examples of the school’s spirit. He also received a merit scholarship from the University of Oklahoma.
