Friday, November 12, 1999

Sweet 16 celebration becomes family lesson in diversity

Erika

When Erika Monee King announced to her family that she wanted her sweet 16 party fashioned after the quinceaneras that many of her friends were having, her mother, Linda, thought it a "simply beautiful" idea.
   Although she was a debutante in 1981 of the Ladies of the Camellia Social Club of Corpus Christi, Linda King was quite familiar with the Hispanic custom, which celebrates a 15-year-old girl's introduction into society with a Mass traditionally followed by a dance.
   Like Erika, many of Linda King's friends in high school were Hispanic and naturally, she also was on the guest list to many such celebrations.
   So when her daughter asked for her own quincea¤era, Linda King was thrilled at the prospect of putting together the kind of formal, festive affair that she remembered attending in her youth.
   After the quincea¤era, Linda King said, the family had received a lesson in diversity.
   "When all was said and done, all we could talk about was how beautiful it was," she said. "All my family and co-workers were there . . . Anglos, blacks, Hispanics. I know they really love Erika as much as we do."
   To plan the occasion, she called on co-worker Bernie Recio and a few other friends for help and immediately went to work on a long list of details - from a $300 vanilla cake with pineapple filling to an eight-member mariachi group.
   "We just went the whole nine yards with this - from the church to the mariachis to the sponsors," Linda King said. "My husband, Leon, is from Georgia, and he had never, ever been to a quincea¤era until he moved to Corpus Christi."
   A new experience
   Unlike Erika, a King High School sophomore, Nekeish Shaunte Joseph, a 14-year-old Moody freshman, had never been to a quincea¤era until last year. So when childhood friend Maria Lidia Perales, also a Moody student, asked her this year to be one of her attendants, Nekeish readily agreed.
   "It was nothing like I had ever seen done for a girl's 15th birthday," Nekeish said of Maria's Sept. 25 affair, which was held at Holy Family Catholic Church and the Boys & Girls Club on Greenwood Drive.
   Being Baptist, Nekeish said, she wasn't accustomed to the prayer rituals or the pew kneeling. But when the disc jockey struck up Tejano music at the dance, Nekeish wasn't lost.
   "I know all the dances," she said. "I can do the cumbias and everything else. What I don't know, I catch on to real quick."
   Nekeish had such a wonderful time, she said, that she now looks forward to Maria's wedding someday.
   "I hear Hispanic weddings are really big, and I hope she asks me to be a bridesmaid," Nekeish said.
   A dream come true
   For Erika, her quincea¤era was a dream come true.
   "It was all worth it. Some of my friends were wondering if they should have one because it takes time and money," she said. "But after they stood in mine, they decided to go for it. They saw that that at mine, I had so much fun that nothing could go wrong, and they want to feel that special moment, too."
   Erika chose angels and stars as the theme of her July 3rd party, and her attendants wore crepe satin dresses of gold and purple. Erika's dress was bedecked with lace and beads. A Baptist preacher presided over the service.
   Erika, her mother said, is the first in the King family to have a quincea¤era.
   And it likely won't be the last.
   The Kings' 10-year-old daughter, Brittany, has asked to have one just like her big sister.
   "And my cousin, Kevin, who has three girls, told me that when it's time for him to have one for his girls, he'd like for me to help him," Linda King said. "And I'm willing to help because it's something great for them to experience.
   "What wonderful traditions we have to hold on to."
  
  
 

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  © 1999 Corpus Christi Caller Times, a Scripps Howard newspaper. All rights reserved.