Chamber hosting Sweetheart Dance next week

The Graham Chamber of Commerce is hosting a community-wide event to help build the bond between a father and daughter, or daughter and father figure. The Sweetheart Dance is being held Saturday, Feb. 15 at the Graham Activity Center.

The event is welcoming children aged 4-12 and their fathers or father figures. The event will cost $30 per pair with each additional child costing $10. Graham Chamber of Commerce CEO Krisa De La Cruz said the idea for the event came years ago from several chamber members.

“The event really came up because we had a group of chamber members, a small group, but a group of chamber members that suggested that we do something to encourage the relationship between father and daughter,” she said. “Obviously, statistically that’s been proven to really be hugely beneficial for a child as they grow up to have that relationship, and so anything our community can do to support and encourage that we feel like is really important.”

For those who want to attend the event, but may not have the means to purchase a ticket, De La Cruz said there is another option.

“We will also provide some complimentary tickets to the school district and some of the churches in town, so that if there is family that wants to attend and needs to take advantage of those complimentary tickets, we hope they will because we want to make sure that no one feels excluded from this and it is really important to me and to the chamber,” she said.

Within the community De La Cruz said there are other daddy daughter dances hosted by churches. She said despite them opening their doors to the community, there are some which might be hesitant to attend because they are not members of the church hosting the event. De La Cruz contacted churches which put on the event before and asked their opinion of a community-wide dance for fathers and daughters.

“The churches that do this are doing this because they believe in the same mission of encouraging the relationship and I think they looked at it as a really positive thing, which made me happy because we wanted to make sure we were all working as one team, not working against each other,” she said.

In making the community-wide dance, De La Cruz said they wanted to be inclusive with the pairs they were allowing to come dance, and the name of the event was one of helping bring more people in.

“We decided to call it a sweetheart dance because we don’t want to discourage people who maybe aren’t necessarily fathers, or biological fathers,” she said. “Sometimes the bond with the grandfather is hugely important or father figure, you know, and so we didn’t want to discourage those that maybe have a relationship with a non-father or a father figure. We want them to come as well.”

Registration for the event must be done in advance online at the chamber of commerce website at grahamtexas.net, or by calling the chamber at 940-549-3355.

For the full story, see the Wednesday, Feb. 5 edition of The Graham Leader.