Kerrie Malloy knows Faith Sinclair would have loved a party like this.
“I think she would have thought this was awesome,” Malloy said as she prepared to enter the Oaks Ballroom for the third annual “Gotta Have Faith Prom” last Friday night. “We would have been mixing up our own nail polishes to match our cocktail dresses . She was a girly girl, and she loved getting dressed up for things like this.”
Sinclair never had the chance to attend her own prom. She was just 16 years old, getting ready for her junior year at Ridley High School, when she was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver in Sharon Hill Aug. 3, 2008.
“She was all about the girly things,” said her father, Mike Ferrell. “She loved to go to dances. She loved to get dressed up.She took every opportunity she could to dress up and go out with her family and friends.”
In her honor, her parents, Mike and Kim Ferrell, began hosting the “Gotta Have Faith Prom,” with the goal of bringing some good from Faith’s tragic death.
About 120 people signed on to attend Friday’s event – some of them Faith’s family members, some of them friends, and some of them people who never had the chance to meet her, but were touched by the story of her life.
It’s the third time her family has held the event, which raises funds for a permanent scholarship at Ridley High School. The award is granted every year to a graduating Ridley senior who plans to further his or her studies in Special Education – the same field Faith was hoping to go into had she graduated in 2010.
“Even though she was only 16, she loved people and knew what she wanted to do,” Mike Ferrell said. “She wanted to help people. We thought this would be a nice way to carry on her memory, by giving this scholarship to someone with the same aspirations that she had.”
Among those lined up at the doors of the Oaks Ballroom Friday night was Malloy, a Ridley Township resident who met Faith a year before her death when the family moved in next door.
“We really became good friends,” she said. “We went to school together. We shared a locker. I miss having her right next door.”