Paving the Way for the Rose Parade : Businessmen Donate 65,000 Hours for New Year’s Event

Promoter Mark Bevan can’t forget the New Year’s Day that the brakes locked on the float he was driving in the Rose Parade, and he nearly crashed into the float ahead.

Pasadena restaurateur Bob Kawashima particularly remembers the time he headed the committee to pick the Rose Queen. That year, two young men joined the hundreds of hopefuls, dutifully calling out their numbers and doing a turn for the judges.

And then there was the Bengal tiger.

A few years back, when a too-tall float collided with a traffic light and stopped the Rose Parade for 18 minutes, furniture store owner Don Fedde and some other Pasadena Tournament of Roses Assn. officials found themselves hugging the broken light standard from a precarious position on a photographers’ stand to keep the cement pole from toppling into the crowd. When it came time to tow the disabled float, the officials found that the only place to attach the tow bar was right in front of an uncaged tiger that stood with its trainer.

“Needless to say, we now have tighter restrictions on animals of that type,” Fedde said with a laugh.

Fedde, Kawashima and Bevan are among the hundreds of business people who each year donate thousands of hours--65,000 by the association’s estimate--to stage the Tournament of Roses Parade and Rose Bowl Game.

They forgo a New Year’s Eve champagne haze to patrol barricades, herd the 60 flower-covered floats, round up the 278 equestrians, organize upwards of 4,500 musicians from 22 marching bands and generally do whatever it takes to put on what 1985 Tournament of Roses President Frederick D. Johnson Jr. calls “a two-hour floral greeting card to the world.”

This New Year’s Day, the theme of the parade is “A Celebration of Laughter,” and columnist Erma Bombeck is grand marshal.

The Tournament of Roses Assn. has about 800 active members--most of them business men and women who live or work within 15 miles of Pasadena City Hall--who are known by the white suits that they wear on parade day. The association also has about 600 inactive but dues-paying members.

Beyond the official “white suiters” of the Tournament association, the parade draws untold numbers of volunteers--certifiable “parade junkies” who annually glue flowers to floats or march, ride or drive the 5.5-mile route.

It’s a singular way for business people to participate in their community: Every town has its chamber of commerce and its service organizations, but only Pasadena boasts the Rose Parade and Rose Bowl Game.

The Pasadena Chamber of Commerce shares many members with the Tournament association, and chamber Executive Vice President Tom Snelson admits that his organization has no hope of competing for business people’s time and energy as parade time nears. But Snelson says he doesn’t mind much, considering the estimated $68.1 million in business that the parade, game and related activities generate each year for the area, according to a study commissioned by the Tournament association.

“It’s a binding force in the community,” Snelson said. “It’s the one thing that really rivets the world’s attention on Pasadena. It’s given us a lot of name recognition.”

Mark Bevan first got hooked on the Rose Parade when he was 15 1/2 years old and possessed a new learner’s permit that allowed him to drive a small float. It ran out of gas.

“I was sitting there and the bands were passing me by, and here I was out of gas,” said Bevan, who now is a partner in Stiletto Ltd., an entertainment managing, marketing and merchandising firm with such clients as Barry Manilow, John Cougar Mellencamp, Diana Ross and Stevie Wonder.

Ignoring guffaws from the crowd, Bevan climbed out of the float with a jug of gasoline he had packed and filled the tank.

Now Bevan is about to participate in his 19th Rose Parade, driving the Baskin-Robbins float.

Bevan, who is not a Tournament association member, takes a week off at the end of the year to get ready for his drive and to perform miscellaneous tasks primarily for C. E. Bent & Son, the company that dominates float building for the parade. He said he developed much of his business skill during the years he spent decorating floats for Bent and supervising crews of high school students.

“A lot of the management techniques I use today I learned from trying to get 20 guys and girls, mainly girls, to do something at the same time,” he said.

Bob Kawashima, who currently heads the Tournament’s music committee, owns a small Pasadena hotel and two restaurants in Pasadena and Torrance called Miyako, as well as a Japanese tea garden at Descanso Gardens.

Even he is amazed by the task of feeding more than 4,500 musicians. “That’s a lot of lunches,” he said.

Kawashima is already at work picking the bands for the 1987 parade, a complex task that involves reviewing recommendations from people in the know and watching lots of videotaped performances. The competition is fierce for the 15 available slots--seven of the 22 bands are regulars. One hundred and ninety-one bands applied to be in Wednesday’s parade.

‘Go With the Performance’

One band from a state in the South, which Kawashima won’t name, wants to come to the Rose Parade so badly that nearly every elected official in the state has written Kawashima a personal letter and every band member has sent a letter and picture. “They call and plead,” he said, “but you have to go with the performance.”

Competitors in business often find themselves working shoulder to shoulder on the parade sidelines.

Don Fedde and Jack Biggar own Pasadena’s oldest and largest furniture stores--Fedde’s and J. H. Biggar Furniture--and they sit together on the Tournament’s executive committee. Al Lowe of Lowes furniture also owns a store on the Colorado Boulevard parade route and is a member of the association.

“It’s kind of two different worlds,” Biggar said. “We’re friendly competitors. We refer customers to each other.”

“There’s a very strong camaraderie in the tournament and it transcends competitive lines,” Fedde said. “We have many attorneys and stockbrokers and other professionals” in the association who might find themselves on opposite sides of a business deal, he added.

The Tournament of Roses demands a good deal of time from its volunteers, particularly as the Rose Parade and bowl game draw near. The president is required to give the most. Johnson, a vice president with Dentsu, Young & Rubicam advertising agency, said about 35% of his business time is devoted to the Tournament of Roses. “As for personal time, there is no estimate,” he said.

Johnson said he and his wife, Barbara, have traveled 27,000 miles this year on Tournament business.

Johnson said one of his favorite tasks was calling Erma Bombeck and asking her to be grand marshal.

“I really felt I was 15 years old calling Angie Dickinson for a date but with one difference--I scored,” he said.

Kawashima, who has been an association member for 25 years, spends three days a week on Tournament business during the busy months at year-end and works three days a week at his business. Parade business demanded four to five hours a week earlier in the year, he said.

“My wife asks me, my employees ask me, even my children ask me: ‘Why do you spend so much time with the Tournament?’ ” Kawashima said. “At first you have simple responsibilities. You stay up all night and that’s fun,” he said. “Little by little, you’re drawn into the organization,” and more time is demanded. Kawashima acknowledged that the time away “is a hardship on our businesses. We really rely on our assistants.”

Volunteers Turned Away

“Most of us don’t play a lot of golf,” said Biggar, whose father, John H. Biggar Sr., was a Tournament association president.

Despite the time that the Rose Parade demands, plenty of potential volunteers are turned away. The Pasadena Tournament of Roses Assn. installs between 50 and 60 new members each year but receives three times more applications than there are vacancies. There is a mandatory retirement age of 65 for active members.

The Tournament is so successful at attracting volunteers because “it seems to be a very satisfactory way to give something back to the community,” Johnson said. “It’s a fun thing to do.”

Fedde allowed that not every business--his, for instance--benefits as directly from the parade as do hotels and restaurants.

“Our visitors don’t take furniture home with them in their suitcases,” he said. “They might window shop, anyway.”