Headdress Creator Makes Petals Add Up to Pounds

When people see Modesto Busto alongside the eight-foot-wide headdress he created, they think of the magnificent workmanship, the floral beauty and his creative genius.

Busto thinks of bills.

“Each time I do this, it costs me a great deal of money,” said the 39-year-old Busto, despite winning $2,000 in a headdress sweepstakes at last month’s Bal Masque benefit for St. Jude Hospital and Rehabilitation Center in Fullerton. Each headdress, he figures, costs him a minimum of $3,000 to make.

“I’d like to continue and probably will,” said Busto, who works as a visual display designer at a botanical nursery. “But this is a financial drain on me.” He says it takes four months to prepare each headdress, including two weeks just to put silk petals on the creations.

“The day before the party, I need six hours to decorate the headdress with fresh flowers,” he said.

Susanne Tom of Fullerton, the mannequin who deftly modeled the 28-pound headpiece, said, “It’s incredible the work that goes into it. He designed the costume, chose the music and picked the theme. He’s absolutely fabulous.”

Regarding the money problem, says Busto, the loss goes with the territory. He still has nine of his past creations stored in his house and garage in Fountain Valley. His award winner this year, built around the theme of the hit Broadway musical “Flower Drum Song,” is on display at Paul’s Flowers in Fullerton.

The headdress decorations included thousands of carnation, daisy and amaryllis lace petals, seaweed and a dragon’s jaw that parts.

“Doing the headpieces does give me a chance to show my creativity,” said Busto, “but really, it goes back to the teachings of my father, who was a helping person after he came here from the Philippines.”

Busto said the “Flower Drum Song” theme depicts the hopes and dreams of people seeking a new homeland, such as his father, who came to the United States in 1929.

Besides showing off his abilities, he said, “I get to see how my contribution helps others.” He pointed out that about $70,000 was raised through the St. Jude benefit sponsored by Damas de Caridad, a hospital support group.

Along with the personal satisfaction of competing with other top designers for the last five years, Busto hopes his participation will lead to other challenges in the visual arts field.

“I want to be the best in my craft,” he said.

He currently is in the planning stages for Christmas displays in major department stores.

The kids who married during World War II are some of the most exciting, durable and adaptive people she has met, says Sarah Kerr, a Newport Beach marriage and family counselor.

She is interviewing senior citizens whose marriages have lasted 45 years or more as part of her work for a doctorate in psychology.

One of the questions Kerr has asked of the nearly 200 senior citizens at the Oasis Senior Citizen Center in Corona del Mar is: “How has your marriage stayed intact and survived?”

Kerr expects to complete her work by year’s end but has already learned that they are a remarkably adaptive and healthy group “who survived before all the new medicines were out.”

She added that they have seen more change in their lifetimes than any other generation of individuals. “There’s no other group that has gone from just a few cars to men on the moon,” said Kerr. “They are a powerhouse out there.”

They call Douglas Manning “super sub” since he’s a substitute teacher upwards of 135 days a year. During his 10 years at Tustin High School, he’s taught every subject except German--and that includes typing, drama, science, music, math and computers.

“I feel comfortable (teaching) anything,” Manning said. Especially at Tustin High School.

Manning, who was born in Tustin and still lives there, is a 1949 graduate of Tustin High. His mother, wife, sister, two sons and a daughter also are Tustin

High graduates.

“This is where I really belong,” said Manning, a retired U.S. Marine Corps major who received the Silver Star and Purple Heart during the Korean War. “High school was such a marvelous time in my life.”

Scholarship candidates not only need good grades to win the club’s two cash awards, says Patricia J. Minshall of Santa Ana, but women have to be 5 feet, 10 inches tall and men 6 feet, 2 inches or taller to be considered.

She said it was thought that the $500 and $250 awards “would be more meaningful if we offered (them) to tall students” since the scholarships are offered by the Santa Ana-based Tall Club of Orange County.

Minshall, who is 6 feet tall and the scholarship chairman, argued that it’s not unusual to restrict scholarships to certain groups, such as athletes.

Acknowledgments--Brenda Premo, 35, of Stanton, the legally blind executive director of the Dayle McIntosh Center for the Disabled in Anaheim, was named Sertoma Club’s South Coast District winner of its Service to Mankind award.