Barbara English’s children back in Boston did not want her to be here.
“My kids think that I should be at home knitting,” said English, 86, who stood ready to get her hands all sticky from glue and flax seeds or whatever. She was taking a short break from float decorating Thursday, Dec. 29 at the Phoenix Decorating Company’s facility in Irwindale.
English and hundreds of other volunteers who carried glue pots, brushes and pails of crushed rice and seeds to paste onto giant floats or who hunched over pallets of yellow roses affixing each with a wooden stem, are the unsung essential workers that make the Rose Parade the spectacle that it has become for 134 years.
The work is not glamorous. But the volunteers inside the giant warehouse feverishly festooning 16 floats that will roll down Colorado Boulevard Monday morning say it is worth it.
English, disobeying children and naysayers back in Bean Town, hopped a flight from Boston to do this for the very first time. “I’m here and I love it. This is wonderful,” she said. “And watching the young people work so hard is so inspiring.”
At faraway glance, the floats look stagnant. But up close, an elk’s hoof looks realistic and a float featuring disabled kids playing sports starts to come to life, as each volunteer works on the massive mobile sculptures like a painter to a canvas.
“You can walk through and feel the energy in this building. It is phenomenal,” said Chuck Hayes, manager of sponsor relations at Phoenix Decorating Co., who said the one word to describe it is “passionate.”
As he walked past the official Tournament of Roses entries, one which spells out Rose Parade and another celebrating 100 years of the Rose Bowl game with chunks of actual turf from the famous field in Pasadena, he said: “Would you think people would get up at 5 a.m. (to volunteer) if they weren’t passionate?”
Phoenix has to train thousands of volunteers — very cheap labor — quickly and efficiently. It runs like a boot camp. The leaders give marching orders. There are timed lunch breaks. Then a back to work call echoes from the loudspeaker.
The regiment doesn’t dissuade volunteers from coming back, in fact, volunteer numbers are up this year as compared to last year, said Alex Manoukian, a crew chief who basically whips hundreds of volunteers into shape.
“You have to give a lot of instructions to people. Maybe say it 10 times until they get it right,” he explained. “Yesterday we had 75 show up after dinner. It was crazy. But they were a great group. They got it from the first try.”
One of his star trios were sisters Stephanie Flores and Michelle Borrecco, in from Northern California, and volunteer Diane Shaw, from Fremont, whom they met this week. All three were adding seeds and earth colors to the baby ocelot featured on the Western Assets float, “Welcome to the Jungle.”
Borrecco climbed onto the float and was painting the wild cat’s eyebrows with white glue. Later, she used the flat end of a covered brush to dab on crushed rice. Borrecco said she developed her artistic flair from her father, who is an architect.
“Oh, that ocelot looks really cute,” admired Manoukian. “It’s a really cute baby.”
A few hundred yards north, David Lacy, 76, of Covina, painstakingly affixed bright green fern fronds that looked like branches to the bare Shriner Children’s “Back in the Game” float.
“They are not glued. They are pinned,” he corrected a reporter. He should know the difference. He’s been a volunteer float decorator for 27 years.
Yes, the work may be tedious, he said. But like a painter admiring a finished canvas, there’s tremendous satisfaction in the end. “You can eventually stand back and say it looks good. I’m proud of it,” he said. “It’s three-dimensional art.”
Creativity gives way to camaraderie in the warehouse, noted Roberta Luster of Santa Clarita, working on the Elks U.S.A. float, which is complete with the iconic animal up top, standing tall. Luster glued on the animal’s colored organic materials, from onion seeds to coffee to golden flax seeds.
“It’s about the camaraderie of the people. This is my adopted family,” she said. Folks she met 25 years ago building the Burbank float invite her and her family over for Christmas dinner every year, she said.
Likewise, Stephanie Flores, one of the two sisters on the Western Assets float, has already exchanged phone numbers with Shaw.
Cindy Velador, 63, is retired. And on Thursday, she crossed off decorating Rose Parade floats from her bucket list, she said. Velador drove in from Tehachapi and participated in this annual ritual for the very first time.
This is equal to other items on her list, including her upcoming trip in April to Spain to visit her nephew in the military. And there’s one more thing to complete.
On Monday, she and her husband will re-walk the 5.5-mile route of the parade, just as she last did at age 16.
English, who has watched live the Mummers Parade in Philadelphia and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City, will have a grandstand seat for the Rose Parade on Monday.
“I love parades. I am 86 so I can’t wait much longer,” she said.
She’ll also have a new favorite parade.
Source: Orange County Register
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