SWINGING TIME A.V. TEENS JITTERBUG TO AID B-17 PROJECT.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

LANCASTER - Lancaster High School students hired a swing band, learned to jitterbug and dressed in World War II costumes to put on a 1940s-style dinner-dance to help refurbish a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber.

The culmination of months of work by some 200 students in teacher Jamie Goodreau's American history classes, the June 1 dance in a hangar at the Planes of Fame museum in Chino raised more than $12,000.

``We were just completely blown away by their enthusiasm and the quality of the program they put together,'' Mark Foster, the nonprofit museum's director of corporate relations, said of the teens.

The ``Pride of the Skies'' dinner-dance provided help far beyond the money it raised, Foster said. It also let people know about the museum's effort, expected to cost more than $1 million, to restore its bomber named Piccadilly Lilly II to flying condition.

``It got the word out. It really started the ball rolling,'' Foster said.

Goodreau's students worked for four months organizing the dance, which drew more than 800 guests - some of whom rode buses from the Antelope Valley, and others who were regular museum visitors or volunteers.

The class project's goal was threefold: to honor veterans, to raise funds for restoring the bomber, and to re-create the 1940s, said Goodreau, who frequently invites World War II veterans to speak in her class.

For the dance, some teens dressed as World War II American soldiers or sailors, or nurses, or defense plant workers. About 40 teens spent a month taking swing dance lessons at Desert Stars dance studio in Quartz Hill.

In a magazine, they found an advertisement for the Moonlight Swing Band, an Auburn ``living history'' group whose musicians wear Army Air Corps uniforms and play Glenn Miller arrangements of '40s tunes.

``The most special part of it was the veterans. They really seemed to be touched by what the kids had done. They were hugging them and dancing with them,'' Goodreau said.

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2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Students in Jamie Goodreau's American history classes gather in front of the B-17 bomber Piccadilly Lilly II.

(2 -- color) Johnathan Matos, left, and Mike Taylor dress up in WWII attire.