Venice : 5 Essayists Win Float Ride

Five Venice students have won spots on a Rose Parade float because of their moving essays about world harmony.

The children from Broadway Elementary School get to ride with Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy on Transamerica Life companies float Jan. 1. Transamerica “adopted” the school in a Los Angeles Unified School District program in which corporations give equipment, sponsor career days or field trips or organize other activities for students.

The students wrote essays on the same topic as this year’s parade theme, “A World of Harmony,” and were interviewed by Transamerica employees. Sixth-grader Johnnie Aqatep wrote that a world of harmony, “where people don’t have to lock their doors in fear,” would have “no gangs or criminals.” Alberto Rascon, 10, pleaded for harmony in San Francisco because “they lost a lot of people” in the earthquake, as well as in Venice, “because of the gangsters that write on walls.”

Roberto Solis, a Latino 12-year-old, described how he sits in class, plays basketball and talks about girls and cars with his friend Dominic, who is black. This shows, he wrote, “There can be harmony between two races if they wanted.”

The children will be dressed in cowboy hats and boots for the “Lassoed by Love” float. The 55-foot-long float, festooned with roses, daisies, mums and orchids, also features a 34-foot-tall Miss Piggy made of carnations and roses, who swings her lasso at a moss-covered Kermit on a hobby horse.