Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 111

A celabiation: Charlotte Craig says you don't have to go to New York for a Statue of Liberty party. V.I.P. Page, 3L. Sunday, April 27, ICC3 ANN LANDERS I On VOLUNTEER DISABLED IN DETROIT DETROIT FREE PRESS Call The Way We Live: 222-6610 FASHION FORDSON HIGH: An American Experience Jicliic ricVJhirtcr no LI MEETS RIDE AST Return of the deb look is enough to make you faint The "deb" look is back. That's "deb" as in debutante.

I read about it in the paper. It seems that many young women are opting for prom dresses reminiscent of the formal dance parties held circa 1940-1960. I'm glad they've abandoned the Earth Child look, the Drop Dead look and the look-what-I-found-in-Grandma's-at-tic look. Still, I wonder if these sweet things understand the agony they have taken upon themselves. The deb look is seemingly simple, and demure.

It's Cinderella at the royal ball. It's Ginger daricing with Fred. It's Doris Day! But it isn't easy to achieve. The deb look depends on very full, puffy, long skirts, typically supported by layers of petticoats And the cultural stew bubbles in the halls of Dearborn school ri oV'i- -J' or some sort of hooped I contraption. It favors I tightly cinched waists, sweetheart necklines (those are the ones that start at the armpits and I curve upward slightly just before plunging to oblivion), sleeves as full as any VsJP VyyV7 worn oy yueen tuzaoein or n0 sleeves at aH-The 3 I strapless look is popular.

Closed pumps with one-i or two-inch heels, deli By TOM HUNDLEY Free Press Staff Writer When the 8:40 a.m. bell rings and the hallways of Dearborn's Fordson High School erupt with students, the scene is a cross-cultural kaleidoscope: English vies with Arabic as the primary language of the boisterous adolescent hubbub; a group of Muslim girls, eyes averted and hair modestly tucked beneath scarves, glide serenely through a noisy swarm of punkers, preppies and jocks in varsity jackets. A hallway trophy case displays photos of Fordson's athletes a cacophony of Anglo, Arab, Italian and Polish names. Many of Ford-son's young men have tested their courage in school sports; others have played for even higher stakes in the streets of Beirut. Catch a glimpse inside a student's locker and you might find a picture of a current rock star or of the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Bath-'room graffiti runs the political gamut from "Kill the Arabs" to "Death to America." The son of Lebanese politician Nabih Berri is a senior at Fordson. Middle America meets the Mid dle East at this school. It is a place where you find perennially powerful football teams; it is also a place where you can find 15-year-old brides whose marriages were arranged by their families. DEARBORN ALWAYS has been a city of contradictions, and nowhere are they more manifest than at Fordson, a Gothic revival masterpiece that appears wildly out of time and place on the corner of Ford Road and Schaefer Highway. In a community yet to live down its reputation for racism and xenophobia, Fordson High is an amazingly rich ethnic stew.

Nearly 40 percent of the students are of Arabic ancestry. Most are Lebanese Muslims, ranging from well-assimilated children of second- "and third-generation immigrants to recent refugees of the decade-long civil war. One also finds a smattering of Yemenis, Palestinians, Syrians and Egyptians. Most non-Arab students locally referred to as "Anglos" or "Americans" are second- and See FORDSON, Page 4 cate white gloves and Free Press JON BUECHEL pearls complete the ensemble. Couldn't you just die! It's all uncomfortable as blazes.

As a veteran, I can tell you that. And you need to know. The cinched waist, for example, is a brute. The idea is to magnify the contrast between the huge skirt and the teensy waistline. So cinch that sucker in to a Scarlet O'Hara 18 inches! The torture-vendors who make ladies' undergarments have a variety of devices for doing this.

There is the plain waist-cincher that just squeezes your middle, forcing everything that normally occupies this space north or south of the border. Since everything has to be somewhere, the tummy may appear to grow scandalously as the waistline shrinks. The rib cage may become more voluptuous than the bust line. This profile may not be what you had in mind. There's another waist-cinching device that combines bra, cinch and tummy depressor all in one.

I don't know where the stuff goes when one is encased in this crusher. I wore one once, in 1951. Before I passed out I discovered it made breathing difficult, sitting unbearable, and sitting and breathing at the same time impossible. You might decide to forget cinching your waist and just go on a diet for a few weeks. That ought to do it.

You'll need a bra, however, even if you don't think you have anything to put in it. All deb The three-part series continues: Monday: Caught in the middle When second- and third-generation Arab-American students get squeezed between cultures. Tuesday: The new arrivals How Fordson High school and an influx of Middle East refugees have learned to cope with each other. Free Press Photos by PATRICIA BECK On the central stairway at Dearborn's Fordson High, students head for class. ,,1 'jjji dresses assume the wearer has something to put in If-- it.

All bra-makers know this and are artists of illusion. You should have no difficulty. The reason you need the bra is because of IS A 1: I (V 1 gravity. It can be an embarrassment, especially when one wears a strapless gown. Strapless gowns have upright supporting members sewn t.V' into them in strategic locations.

They're iron rods. What they're supposed to do is hold the top part of the dress, called the bodice, at attention, no matter what. Sometimes even iron rods aren't enough. A bra can be a comfort, even when it is not comfort able. And it will not be comfortable.

It will be full of iron rods, too. About the gloves. They're a nuisance, but they "There's a potential here for a riot every 10 minutes, but It doesn't happen. The kids know how to handle It. The faculty knows how to handle It." Dania Lindros "Once someone makes It known that they want to participate, there's no discrimination well, only a little but they're pretty much accepted." Ted Stockton "Three lockers down from me, another kid has pictures of a burning American flag.

If you have a picture of a burning American flag, what are you doing here? Why don't you go back?" Paul Swiatlowskl "There are some people who are Jerks because they're Jerks, not because they're Arabs. You have a bad experience with one, and you want to condemn the whole culture, but that's pretty stupid." Tbdd Gonzalez are essential for the finished deb look. You'll lose one, so don't spend a lot of money on them. Always take them off when you eat. (That's when you'll lose one.) Have a wonderful time.

I know you'll get home early. You'll be in pain. She forgives first one murderer, then all Ill J.JJJl..., Ill BL I .1 Guindon's Detroit jgn 1 I has a beat-up car that someone gave her, and her relatives are always worried about her safety and are urging her to go back to the suburbs. There isn't much in her life to buffer her material needs." Jaeger admits she never envisioned her life-style: "I always thought I'd live in a peaceful valley in Montana for the rest of my life. But it seemed the Lord had other plans." Jaeger grew up in a blue-collar section of Dearborn Heights, graduated from St.

Al-phonsus Catholic High School, married a neighborhood boy and settled into the full-time occupation of raising five children. A five-week family camping trip to Headwater State Park near Bozeman, in 1973 shattered that life. Jaeger's memory of June 25 is vivid with details: When she kissed her children good night, her lips barely brushed Susie's, whose sleeping bag was jammed in the tent's farthest corner. "Oh no, Mommy, not like that," Susie protested, reaching to give Jaeger a big kiss "There, that's the way it should be." Before dawn, someone slashed a 20-inch hole in the children's canvas tent and snatched Susie. For 15 months, Jaeger managed to find hope in the cyclj of outrage, hatred and See LIFE, Page 6 By CATHERINE HAVEN Free Press Special Writer For 13 years Marietta Jaeger of Detroit has lived with inescapable pain: She is the mother of a murder victim.

She seeks no revenge. Instead, she opposes efforts to reinstate Michigan's death penalty, led by Oakland County Prosecutor L. Brooks Patterson. "Two of L. Brooks Patterson's major concerns and I believe his concern is genuine is deterrence of criminals and justice for victims' families," says Jaeger, 48, a member of the Wayne County chapter of the Michigan Coalition Against the Death Penalty.

The chapter is co-sponsoring a rally from today at downtown Detroit's Kern Block, site of Michigan's last execution, in 1830. In 1973, Jaeger's seven-year-old daughter, Susie, was kidnapped while on vacation in Montana. After a 15-month search, the child was found brutally murdered. "The death penalty in Montana did not deter the man who kidnapped my daughter. He had taken several children, and after he was arrested, he would not confess to any deaths in counties where the prosecutors still held out for the death penalty." Long ago Jaeger forgavhim; that for- giveness, in turn, changed her life.

WITH HER CHILDREN grown and her 27-year marriage crumbling in 1983, Jaeger moved out of her Farmington Hills home into a plant-and-pottery-filled three-room flat near Tiger Stadium. She apologizes to a visitor for her tiny home's musty smell. A neighborhood bag lady who spent six weeks this winter with Jaeger has just moved out, and a Saginaw speaking engagement has postponed any housecleaning. Jaeger lives meagerly, supporting herself through a part-time job at the Episcopal Diocese, speaking engagements and occasional residual checks from her book "The Lost Child" ($4.95, Zondervan Press), which chronicles Susie's kidnapping. A deeply religious woman, her convictions compel her to join weekly peace vigils at Williams International Corp.

in Walled Lake to protest its cruise missile manufacturing; to distribute anti-war leaflets at Bendix Corp. in Southfield; to march against U.S. aid to contras in Nicaragua; and to fight the move for capital punishment. In August 1983, her beliefs earned her 26 days in Oakland County Jail for trespassing at Williams. "Financially, she is always on the edge," says Basilian Father Gordj) Judd, arrested with Jaeger and two others in that protest.

"She lives with no medical insurance. She Free Press Photo by GEORGE WALDMAN Marietta Jaeger is fighting the death penalty even thoucfh her seven-year-old daughter was a murder victim. "Wanna qet in on a bottle of wine?".