Toni Redick

Jason had asked me to prom junior year. I said no. I couldn’t afford a dress.

I grew up military. I was born in Memphis, Tennessee, spent my elementary years in Japan, and lived more places than I can count. By the time I graduated high school, I was in Rapid City, South Dakota, in a class of more than nine hundred students.

That’s where I met Jason. We were fifteen.

My father struggled with addiction, and there wasn’t always food in the house. There was a gas station down the street, and the guy who worked there was really kind to me. He would give me free egg rolls and stuff so I could eat.

Going into my senior year, my youth pastor knew something in my home wasn’t safe. My younger brother and sister were going to live with my mom. My youth pastor and his wife asked me what I was going to do. I told them I didn’t know. I really had nowhere to go.

They told me I could live with them so I could graduate from the same high school. So I moved in with my youth pastor, his wife, and their four children. Their oldest was in fourth grade. They had a newborn.

I still talk to that family today. They treat me like their own. We try to get together every year, or at least every other year.

That year living with them, made me feel loved, valued, and safe.

I wasn’t going to ask them for anything. They were already taking me in with four little kids of their own.

Jason had asked me to prom our junior year. I said no because I couldn’t afford a dress.

Senior year, I really wanted to go with him. I still didn’t have money for a dress, so I called my grandma. She had material in her basement, and she told me if I came over and found a color I liked from what she already had, she would sew me a dress.

I found some material and she made me a dress. It was pretty, but simple. Straight lines. Nothing fancy.

And I went to prom.

Jason and I eventually came to Missouri together for college. I hadn’t grown up in a Christian home, and I wanted to learn more about the Bible. Someone in South Dakota told us about Southwest Baptist University, so we applied and came to Missouri. We never thought we would stay here this long.

We moved to Lebanon in 2003 and joined Heritage Baptist Church in 2004. Jason and I both worked with teenagers, and eventually he became the youth pastor at Heritage. I became a school based social worker for the Lebanon School District, and later a counselor at the high school.

Back then, the high school did a big red carpet at the civic center for prom. Students would pull up in fancy cars and walk the carpet while the whole city sat in bleachers taking pictures. I used to go to support our youth group kids.

It made me nauseous.

I would watch certain students get out of the car, and you could tell their dress probably cost hundreds of dollars less than everybody else’s. They didn’t seem as confident. It broke my heart, because I remembered. I remembered not going to my junior prom because I had no money. I remembered senior year, when it was still just, this is the material I have, you get what you get. I knew I would have been mortified walking down that red carpet in high school because of the lack of resources I had.

Then in 2007, a couple of students came to me. I already had a closet at the school with clothes, socks, shoes and other things students might need. These girls told me they knew students who couldn’t afford to go to prom.

I thought, this is a giving community. I wonder if we reached out to people, if they would donate dresses.
I had no idea how big it would get.

The dresses started coming.

Prom dresses. Bridesmaid dresses. Gala dresses. Dresses with brand new tags still on them. We outgrew the space at the school, and over the years the prom closet had five different homes.

Eventually someone at Heritage built shelves around an entire room for me, and we organized the dresses by size and color. Then people started donating shoes and jewelry. Women from our church started showing up with their own makeup, hair supplies and nail polish. We had people doing hair and makeovers. Someone volunteered for years doing alterations for free. Businesses donated dresses and tuxedos. People donated lunches and restaurant gift certificates. Some of those students had never been to a restaurant and ordered off a menu.

I never had to buy anything. People just kept giving.

We would have try on days, and volunteers would help girls look through the dresses. When somebody found the perfect one, that was always the coolest moment. Look what I found. I wanted them to feel just as special as they could be.

We did it for fifteen years. My daughters grew up in it.

Every time we had a try on day or a day where we were helping kids get ready, they were there with me. That mattered to Jason and me. If we were going to serve, we wanted our girls serving alongside us.

They still do. Today Jason pastors Heritage and leads Refuge, and I run a mental health small group there. One of our daughters helps lead worship. The other does childcare. We are there every week together. I don’t ever want serving at church to come at the expense of our family. To me, it’s God, then family, then the church.

After fifteen years with the prom closet, I knew I was ready to let it go. I was working full time as a counselor at the high school. I was a pastor’s wife. I was raising our girls. But by then I had more than six hundred dresses.

Jason told me I might have to do it another year, because who was going to take six hundred prom dresses? I didn’t want to give them to just anyone.

So I sat down and prayed. I asked the Lord, whatever you want with this, just guide me to what you want me to do.

Not long after that, I saw something one of our former youth group kids had posted about the Fostering Hope Closet. I trusted her heart and her judgment, and I remember thinking it looked like a really neat organization.

So I sent a message to Live 2 Give Hope. I introduced myself, explained what the prom closet was, and asked a pretty ridiculous question. Do you guys have room for six hundred dresses?

Laura messaged me back pretty quickly. She said they had people willing to build extra space in the back. They would take them.

I thought, that did not just happen. I had expected to message fifteen different agencies, put the dresses in a U Haul, and drive them around until somebody could take them. Instead, they built the space in about three weeks. Then they showed up at the church with trailers and a whole group of helpers, and we loaded every dress. I gave them the rolling racks too.

After they left, I cried. It was a good cry. I was thankful I got to serve that way for fifteen years, and I had peace about who was taking it over.

What started in one little room at a school is still going, getting students to prom across the Ozarks.

Toni Redick
Lebanon R-III counselor
founder of Lebanon’s original Prom Closet