Brandon Elks Lodge Dinner Raises Prom Funds for Willis Peters Exceptional Student Center

Leslie Morris misses the husband who supported her work as an administrator at the Willis Peters Exceptional Student Education Center at Dover Elementary School.

But she misses him a bit less — because she feels his presence even more — when she attends the annual Willis Peters prom fundraiser, which Don Morris, who died in July 2009, spearheaded in his work as an avid Elks member.

The dinner and dance fundraiser for the 2011 Willis Peters prom was held April 3 at the Brandon Elks Lodge, 800 Centennial Lodge Drive.

Morris remembers years ago telling her husband about the need to raise funds for the Willis Peters prom. The center serves students, ages 3 to 22, with limited intellectual functioning and other disabilities, including deafness and visual, language, speech and physical impairments.

“He stepped in, he was retired, and said we could do a fundraiser, the Elks will provide the facility,” Morris said about her husband’s push to get involved. “He just threw his whole heart and soul into the fundraiser."

Leslie Morris gives high marks to Dorinda Rountree, secretary for the Hillsborough County School District’s Area 6 director, Jerry Jackson, and before him, Barbara Franques, who retired from the school district in 2009 after 38 years in the system.

The 2011 fundraiser “went beyond my expectations,” Rountree said. “I’m thrilled, I’m over the moon. My ticket sales were down, because I know people have to be very particular about how they spend their money today, but we were able to raise enough money to pay for the prom and that’s my goal, to give it to the kids.”

The  prom is scheduled for May 14 and again the Brandon Elks Lodge will donate its rental space for the event, as it does each year for the fundraiser. As is a tradition, Dennis Lee and his band will donate their time to entertain the dance attendees.

“We are convinced that this is the only way these kids are going to get a prom, is if we donate our space,” said Dennis Osborn, past exalted ruler, or president, of the BrandonElks. “A number of us come and kind of just observe the prom. It’s neat to watch the kids during the prom. Some of them are physically challenged and a number of them are mentally challenged but they all enjoy it, and watching the kids dance, it’s just great.”

Franques agrees.

“I understand why Willis [Peters] loved his kids so much,” Franques said about the former, and since deceased, principal of Dover Elementary School, where the center is in operation. “Things that we take for granted every day, like walking and brushing our teeth, are challenges for these kids and to see the joy and the excitement that they display every day, it’s something you never forget.”

Peters had a goal to build a handicapped-accessible playground at Dover Elementary, Franques said, “and without exception every person we asked and every business we asked stepped up to the plate so we could build that playground."

Simply put, Franques said, Peters was passionate about his kids. As she put it: “He believed in them and they believed in him."

As for Leslie Morris, she was certain her husband was with her in spirit at the April 3 fundraiser. And if he were there, she said, he would give high praise to Rountree, who in turn said she could hear in her mind’s eye Don Morris saying: “Kiddo, good job.”

 “Dorinda has carried on [the legacy] and I am amazed at [the success],” Leslie Morris said. "She has picked up the gauntlet and ran with it.”

The April 3 fundraiser included contributions from Outback Steakhouse and deejay Tony Huntley of CT Enterprises. Dennis Lee and his band were not able to play at this year’s fundraiser because of a scheduling conflict.