Lighting Up the Sky Just Sideline for Him

Robert A. Metter is a free-lance fireworks specialist with a positive attitude.

“If you have a positive attitude you don’t have many setbacks, including injuries,” said the Pacific Bell Telephone Co. worker in Anaheim who finds great joy in lighting the sky with rainbow-colored spectaculars.

Setting off fireworks gives him a shot of adrenalin.

“You get people’s attention from all over because they can see the show for miles,” said the one-time boat decorator and Vietnam Army veteran.

In fact, Metter often sees his handiwork while driving home to Diamond Bar after the show.

“I tell myself ‘I put that cloud up there,’ ” he said. “It’s a real charge to have thousands of people out there and hear them cheer when you shoot fireworks for them.”

He put on the show at Anaheim Stadium for the Fourth of July, a continuation of the sparkling sideline he started in 1975.

“I just got interested in it after watching a fireworks show at Disneyland,” he said, pointing out that a good attitude is a prime requisite in safely shooting fireworks at outdoor public shows.

Metter, 43, said many fireworks are shot from mortars.

“You have to feel good about yourself and what you’re doing, otherwise you can run into big trouble with the fireworks,” he said. “Shooting from mortars is like firing a cannon.”

Metter, one of about 500 licensed fireworks shooters in Southern California, follows a specific list of rules that includes “staying away from the mortars when they are loaded. That makes them like loaded little cannons.”

One way to protect himself and others is his contingent of helpers, which includes his brother, sister and friends.

He had 15 helpers for the Anaheim Stadium show and most of them are working for their own fireworks licenses, which take two years of apprenticeship to acquire.

He has known most of them since he was 10 years old.

“Shooting fireworks is less dangerous than staying home and baking pies,” said Metter, a night student at Cal Poly Pomona studying for a business degree. “It’s what you choose to do. Everything has an element of risk.”

The Pasadena City College graduate said that in his early days he wanted to be rich and famous, “but I didn’t end up getting either of them.”

Instead, he said, “Fireworks is my little fame and fortune and I feel real proud about it.”

The 23-year phone company veteran figures he has choreographed 170 fireworks shows throughout Southern California since 1975.

Most are finales of such shows as high school graduations, football homecoming games, dedications of shopping centers, commercials for television and Fourth of July celebrations.

He also shot fireworks for the last Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

After earning his business degree, Metter plans to get into some phase of the electronics world.

“I haven’t quite figured that out yet,” he said. But “whatever turns up, I’ll still be shooting fireworks.”

A year and a half ago, Todd Harwood, 27, joined the Garden Grove Elks Lodge and immediately became deeply involved in its clown program, which entertains kids and senior citizens, and performs at charity events.

So much, in fact, that the restaurant manager and Midway City resident decided to get married on the Elks float during the recent St. Patrick’s Day parade in Hollywood.

His fiancee, Marilyn Laizure, 29, wasn’t all that thrilled with the idea, “but after we discussed the plan, she got caught up in it too,” he said.

Harwood noted, however, that while she vetoed the idea of getting married in clown costumes, everyone else on the float wore one.

But it appears that those who clown together have a good chance of staying together.

“Now she wears a costume and goes with me on some of my clown assignments,” he said.