MORAN — The day before Valentine’s Day, Marmaton Valley PTO hosted a Father-Daughter Sweetheart Dance, their third-annual. The high school commons area was full of over 40 girls from PreK-5th grade. Plenty of sweets, pop music and pink created a joyous, electric atmosphere. The dads seemed content to let the girls have the dance floor to themselves most of the night, as they jammed out to “Golden” from KPop Demon Hunters, the Village People’s “YMCA,” and other hits.
Ashley Tynon, Marmaton Valley Elementary PTO president, said 74 dads and daughters registered for the event. Tickets were $10 per couple, with proceeds benefiting the PTO.
It was pouring rain outside for most of the dance, but hardly anyone noticed. Girls wore a stunning variety of dresses and colors, but almost every single one of them danced barefoot, with sweaty brows and hair a bit tousled, smiles as wide as the Mississippi.
The slow dances were when fathers finally let themselves be wrested from their seats, pulled to the dance floor by daughters eager for a special moment with Dad. The littlest ones were content to be carried in long embraces, while others twirled and country two-stepped.
Most of the night, it was loud. Booming music, lots of screaming, and plenty of laughing. But when “She’s Somebody’s Daughter,” a song by Drew Baldridge first released in 2019, came on, something changed. Everyone was dancing.
“She’s somebody’s daughter, she’s somebody’s everything, she’s somebody’s little girl,” streamed through the speakers, the song a slow, sentimental ballad. “She’s somebody’s whole world, she’s somebody’s baby.”
As the song ended, the moment passed. Girls ran back to friends and dads headed to their seats. But before that, if for just a brief, suspended moment, there was a room full of dads holding on to their daughters. They were doing so in perfect silence.
