Elizabeth Morando kept practicing her smile in the mirror. It was prom night and she knew she’d get more stares than usual from other students who didn’t understand her disability.
“You look so cool, Lizzy,” her sister told her while spraying body glitter on her homemade yellow satin dress.
“Really?” Morando asked, staring down at herself.
“I swear,” her sister said.
Morando’s mother, Laura Jallo-Morando, stopped to marvel at her 19-year-old daughter.
“She looks beautiful,” she said from another room.
“You look real pretty, baby,” her father, Jesse Morando, said after returning from work at BP Amoco.
This exchange took place 20 years ago in their busy Whiting home. I stood off to the side watching it unfold on a special Friday night in their lives. I remember it like it was last Friday night.
Morando’s fancy new hairdo, held together by bobby pins, hair spray and her sister’s touch, covered the fresh stitches in her scalp. Just four days earlier, the Whiting High School senior endured her sixth surgery that year to correct a shunt implanted in her head. She was leery of attending any public event, let alone a school prom.
Her mother made sure that her youngest daughter joined the fun just like her older sisters did. Family tradition, she insisted. It was her mother who had always been there for “Lizzy,” from her first breath to first words to first steps. If she had to use a special “dancing cane” for her first prom, decorated with yellow ribbon, silver beads and a bow, so be it.
“This is Liz’s special night,” her mother told me that day.
Morando wore her big sister’s earrings, a neighbor’s pearl necklace, pink lip gloss, and a mist of Realities perfume. She felt special, in the best imaginable way for a girl who was born with bacterial meningitis, which caused cerebral palsy, several orthopedic surgeries and a life she wouldn’t wish on any other kid, even the ones who teased her since second grade.
Since fourth grade, Morando felt protected by her best friend, fellow WHS senior Tony Fernandez, who would be her prom date. The two made a sweet couple together, with Fernandez decked out in a black zoot suit, suspenders and a dark fedora hat.
“You look like the Mexican Mafia,” one of Morando’s sisters joked.
“I know,” Fernandez replied with a mischievous smile.
The 18-year-old caught a glimpse of himself in a window, tilted his fedora, and told no one in particular, “God, I look good.”
“Who looks like a princess today?” a neighbor asked Morando, who looked down in embarrassment.
Her mother made the young couple pose in front of the family’s “party tree” for pre-prom photos. Another family tradition. She insisted her daughter look up longingly at Fernandez for one last photo.
“I’m not getting married, Mom,” her daughter sighed.
The young couple squeezed into her mother’s minivan for the short drive to the school. Inside a hallway, Morando melted into a sea of pastel prom dresses waiting to be announced on the auditorium stage with her hot date. Her family waited in the fourth row, armed with more cameras than celebrity paparazzi.
Backstage, Morando held onto a wall, then a post, tethered to her cane as she shuffled toward the stage. “Unchained Melody” played in the background. Finally, her big moment arrived. “Liz Morando, escorted by Tony Fernandez,” echoed from the speakers.
The couple joined together. She gripped his arm tightly. He leaned over to make it easy. With her dancing cane leading the way, they slowly walked through a decorated arch toward the crowd. Everybody stared, just like she expected. And everybody applauded, just like she never expected.
Later that school year, a similar situation played out as “Pomp and Circumstance” echoed through the high school auditorium for her graduation ceremony.
“We all were there yelling loudly and very proudly,” her mother told me last week.
I circled back with the family for an update on Morando and Fernandez, who I last saw 20 years ago on that memorable night. They’re re still together. And still happy in their shared air space every day.
“I believe they are true soul mates,” said Laura Morando, who now has three grandchildren.
Morando and Fernandez never married, but they are “promised together forever.”
After graduating from high school, Morando attended Indiana University Northwest for one semester. She also enjoyed summer camps for adults with disabilities, even completing a three-mile walk.
In 2012, she purchased her first house, though due to unexpected structural issues she had to move out. Four years later, she purchased her “forever home” in Whiting with two other roommates, her cats Charlie and Peanut. She and Fernandez enjoy watching TV together, window shopping, and spending time at friends’ houses.
Just like in her youth, the 37-year-old Morando feels strong and independent with Fernandez by her side.
“As for the dreams I had for her, she continues to make them come true,” her mother said. “She is loving and loved. She will always be my baby girl.”
Twenty years after an auditorium of strangers applauded Morando when she took the stage with her date and her dancing cane, her mom is still applauding.
“I feel she may not have conquered the world, but she didn’t let the world conquer her.”
