The Party’s Over : Organizer Steps Down, but Her Passion for ‘Safe, Sober’ Grad Nights Persists

Jacques Cousteau might have been thinking of Lori Warmington when he said: “You give time to what you love.”

Warmington has devoted much of her time over the past eight years to her favorite cause--making high school graduation parties safe and sober experiences.

Thanks to Warmington, parents here and abroad are taking a more active role in ensuring that seniors’ traditional all-night celebrations are free of drugs and alcohol. And in planning and executing these parties, parents and others in the community have become more involved with their youth, Warmington said.

This year, most of the public and private high schools in Orange County will hold grad night parties planned by parents using ideas espoused by GRADS, the informational network Warmington helped found.

Half of the 1,700 high schools throughout the state and about a quarter of the 25,000 high schools across the nation will also have the large-scale, parent-planned senior shindigs. And GRADS, formerly called the Grad Night Foundation, gets requests for information from parents all over the world.

After mailing thousands of brochures, talking to hundreds of parents and visiting dozens of grad night parties, the “grad night guru” is stepping down. Although she’ll remain involved on a consulting level, Warmington has decided to cut the amount of time and energy she spends on the program.

“It’s the fastest-growing (community) grass-roots phenomena, not only in California,but the nation,” Warmington said recently from her Lido Isle home. “Within a few years, every high school in the state will celebrate graduation in a safe environment.

“For me, it’s time to step back. I don’t feel sad--I feel as if the momentum is there. The philosophy and spirit of this is established.”

The onetime teacher, a mother of three, was introduced to grad night in 1983, when her children’s school, Newport Harbor High, held its first parent-planned senior party.

Newport Harbor parents wanted an alternative to graduation parties after a series of serious student traffic accidents around graduation the year before, including a fatality. They contacted parents at San Marino High School in the Pasadena area, where “safe and sober” graduation parties had already become a tradition.

At the time, the only Orange County high schools offering the on-campus graduation parties were Valencia in Placentia (which pioneered the safe-and-sober concept in 1957), Laguna Beach and Corona del Mar.

Warmington, a perpetual volunteer, remembers the awe she felt as she helped with that first Newport Harbor party, which had a Roaring ‘20s theme.

“I was so impressed with the creativity, and there was just so much love there,” Warmington said. “I just couldn’t believe the parents did this--it looked like Knott’s Berry Farm. At the party, I was working the hot-dog stand, and one student said to me, ‘I never knew people cared that much.’

“It was sort of a positive self-esteem experience for everyone--parents, students, the school, the community.”

This is key to grad night, according to Warmington, who sometimes speaks of it almost in religious terms. Grad night not only helps students feel valued and loved, it gives parents a sense of worth, draws out latent creativity and allows the entire community to get involved with youth, Warmington said.

Typically, parents begin planning for the party a year in advance and spend a combined 5,000 to 7,000 hours on the project. They choose a theme and provide the labor.

They raise money for food, prizes, games, live bands and elaborate decorations that often include extravagant parent-built sets worthy of Academy Award nominations. Money and materials are solicited from local businesses.

Security is tight at the parties to keep out drugs and alcohol. The students, who pay up to $45 for admission, may not leave early unless there is a good reason and parents are notified. Even teens initially skeptical of a party thrown by their parents have said they don’t resent the rules because the gala turns out to be so much fun.

Realizing “this is well worth replicating,” Warmington in 1985 coordinated publicity for grad nights at Newport Harbor, where her son was a senior, and Valencia, Laguna Beach and Corona del Mar high schools.

In 1986, she and another Newport Harbor parent, Judy Hemley, started the nonprofit organization to provide “how-to” brochures and guidance for parents. The group now provides training seminars and a hot line and has sent materials to schools in every state, as well as to Canada, Mexico, Japan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Italy, Taiwan and Germany.

“It doesn’t matter the socio-economic background of the community; parents just need to know where the resources are and work together for the sake of their children,” Warmington said.

“With any big event, prom or graduation or whatever, kids will party. My direct interest was to market this and form a network of concerned parents, an active force to bring in community support.”

In an effort to keep their often-sophisticated children well-entertained, parents conjure up creativity they never even knew they had, Warmington said.

She recalls one father, a dentist by trade, who wanted to build a fire-breathing dragon for a grad night in Tustin. Despite a total lack of experience in creating anything of the like, he and three other fathers managed to fashion mattresses and other common materials into an impressive mechanical figure that moved and breathed fire and smoke.

“The motivation is to create a safe environment that’s also fun for the kids,” said Newport Harbor parent Patrick Allen, an architect who helped design the sets for daughter Christina’s grad night party held Tuesday.

Allen and other parents turned the Newport Harbor gymnasium into a cruise ship complete with casino and disco. The adjacent quad became a colorful, carnival-like Jamaican village with game and food booths, trained parrot shows and a karaoke sing-along machine.

“You start on something like this, and you have a picture of what it might entail and you draw up some plans. But it doesn’t stop there. Once you get going, you put on your tool belt. It’s more fun to be there and work with the people and improvise as you go on.”

With her youngest child out of high school and other volunteer projects on the back burner, Warmington will leave it to other GRADS volunteers to pursue further successes.

She looks forward to spending more time with her husband, developer Robert Warmington, and sons Drew, 25, and Chace, 22, and daughter Erin, 19. After years of working with crowds of parents and students, she hopes to have more quiet time to engage in the relaxing pastimes she so loves--reading, listening to music and taking walks around Newport Beach.

She’s also actively involved with charity and environmental groups and several programs at UCI, including the Global Common Classroom project that computer-links local and overseas schoolchildren, and the university’s efforts to provide educational opportunities for American Indians.

“I feel blessed that I was a part of this process,” she said. “I want families to understand there’ll be a supportive framework to make things happen. And I want the kids to know their lives are worth celebrating.”