Daddy's little girls

Brooke and Brynn Nelson join their father for the Sumner/Bonney Lake Recreation Department’s

By Avani Nadkarni/of The Herald

Ed Nelson usually doesn’t dress up. Lounging around home on Lake Tapps, he prefers wearing jeans or sweats and a “Seattle Fire Department” t-shirt. For his daughters, however, he’ll do anything — even if that means wearing a suit and tie for the annual Sumner/Bonney Lake Recreation Department’s Daddy Daughter Dance.

“He’s the fireman that cleans up once a year for his girls,” his wife, Lori Nelson, said, laughing.

The girls, 8-year-old Brooke and 6-year-old Brynn, clearly return the adoration. With the help of their mother, they carefully preened before the Feb. 6 dance, sleeping in curlers the night before and wearing sparkly dresses — red for Brynn and teal for Brooke — and matching black heels. They draw the line at makeup, though — upon looking at a photo of herself from last year’s dance, when she was wearing a bit of mascara, Brynn Nelson exclaimed, “My eyes look freaky!”

“We don’t get to see him all the time because he’s a fireman,” Brynn Nelson said of her father, who works two 24-hour shifts a week at the Seattle Fire Department. “I like to go to the dance with him.”

Saturday was the third time the Nelsons headed to the dance and when the trio arrives at Bonney Lake High School, the site of the dance, 15 minutes early, several father-daughter couples are already there. By 6:30 p.m., when the dance was set to start, the high school commons were nearly packed.

“It’s such a fabulous event that people come year after year after year,” department director Rebecca Giles said, adding that the dance has been around for 15 years. “We’re expecting 400 people this year.”

Giles said she and the other organizers know how important it is to the families, so they took special care to turn the commons into a Valentine’s paradise. Tables were decorated with red, pink and white tablecloths and paper hearts covered nearly every square inch of the area. In the back, professional photographers took photos of the dads and daughters. The Nelsons order one 8-by-10 photo, plus a handful of wallet-sized pictures to send the girls’ grandmothers, each year.

“We put them on top of the piano,” Brooke Nelson explained of the larger photos.

Although only a few of the youngest and bravest girls are twirling around the dance floor at the beginning, just thirty minutes in, dozens of fathers and daughters are dancing around in pairs and groups. The deejay plays a variety of music, from Eric Clapton to the Black Eyed Peas and — to a crowd of shrieking girls — Miley Cyrus. One of the night’s most touching moments comes when he plays John Mayer’s “Daughters,” — the first line of the chorus is “Fathers be good to your daughters, daughters will love like you do” — and the dads and girls slow dance.

Much of the crowd, like the Nelsons, are returnees but many dads and daughters attended for the first time, too, like Michael Coats and his 8-year-old daughter Mickayla.

“I came to spend time with my daughter, which is so important,” Michael Coats said. After first taking photos, the Coatses decided to cut a rug, swing dancing around the dance floor.

The dance is a yearly highlight for the Nelson girls but isn’t the only time Ed Nelson spends time with his daughters. The girls have a collection of extracurricular activities — swimming, volleyball, basketball and fastpitch, the Emerald Hills Elementary’s science club — and both their parents coach several teams and are active in the science club, as well.

But, said Lori Nelson, the family generally plays outdoors and likes to get dirty. The dance gives them a chance to be fancy.

“It’s a chance for them to see how a boy’s supposed to treat them,” Lori Nelson said. “Dad can show them what a gentleman’s supposed to do.”

Dance volunteer Cheryl Jessop, who’s two daughters attended the dance with their father, later echoed Lori Nelson’s sentiment.

“It teaches the girls how they should be treated by men,” Jessop agreed.

In true gentleman form, Ed Nelson gave each of his daughters a wrist corsage, red for Brynn to match her dress and pink for Brooke. With his wife’s help, he carefully puts the corsages on them before they left their house. In true kid form, dead on with Lori Nelson’s prediction, both the wrist corsages and matching black shoes were off thirty minutes into the dance, but Ed Nelson didn’t seem to notice as he dances with one girl on each arm, weaving amidst the hundreds of other fathers on the dance floor.

“I couldn’t imagine not being here,” Ed Nelson said later, sipping a cup of punch. “Brooke’s almost 9 — that’s halfway to 18. How’d it go by so fast? Everything (we do with the girls) takes a lot of time, but what could be better?”