Rose Parade Turning Red, White, Blue

It’s 10 weeks until New Year’s Day, but Pasadena’s 113th Tournament of Roses is starting to look like the Fourth of July as organizers scramble to redesign their floats, adding noble eagles, rousing marches and millions of petals of red, white and blue.

The parade, one of Southern California’s signature events, will keep its 2002 theme of “Good Times.” But in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, it will be substantially revamped to show the world Americans rallying around the flag.

All of which is adding up to what tournament President Ronald Okum predicts will be the most unabashedly pro-American Rose Parade since it saluted the American Bicentennial in 1976.

“It’s something that people will want, a pleasant diversion,” Okum said.

A new patriotic prologue to the parade is still a few weeks from being finalized, he said, but other changes are quickly falling into changes are quickly falling into place. In addition to the more prominent red, white and blue float decor--which, under the tournament’s century-old rules, must be done completely with petals, leaves, seeds and the like--new guests of honor are being sought to ride along, notably military personnel and New York City police and firefighters.

“As the president said, the bad people have given us bad times,” Okum said. “Now it’s time for the good people to have their good times.”

The Rose Bowl football game, which in the past always has pitted the Pac 10 and Big 10 champions on Jan. 1, will be played instead on Jan. 3 between the top two teams in the country to determine a national champion.

At the Tournament House in Pasadena, officials said no one can recall so many late changes in the parade since World War II, when it was reduced to a token exercise amid widespread fears of enemy attack.

In May, float designs mirroring the mood of a carefree, prosperous America were fairly well established, said Gary DiSano, parade entry chairman. But in the days after the terrorist attacks, many sponsors of the parade’s 53 floats--companies and organizations paying about $500,000 for a flower-bedecked behemoth--took a fresh look at how their entries played on the reordered geopolitical stage. The tournament expects a worldwide television audience of 425 million.

One of the first was Steve Power-Fardy, marketing communications manager of Infonet Services Corp. of El Segundo. He dropped by Phoenix Decorating Co.’s Pasadena warehouse a few days after the terrorist attacks for his regular weekly visit to check progress on his company’s float.

It was still just a steel skeleton--with a sun-white skirt of sparks that welders sent dancing across the floor--but Power-Fardy realized that something felt discordant about the original design, centered on balloons and gaily flowered skyrockets shooting out of a giant globe.

“It was kind of weird that I was here trying to say, ‘Hey let’s have a happy party.’ It just didn’t seem right,” Power-Fardy said.

He went to Phoenix President Bill Lofthouse and they revisited the drawing board. Now, instead of rockets, the globe will produce flocks of real doves, and instead of “Happy New Year,” its message will be “One World, One People.”

Similarly, a few days after Sept. 11, the Veterans of Foreign Wars Rose Parade liaison, Assistant Adjutant Gen. Benny Bachand, was at the group’s headquarters in Kansas City, Mo. During a meeting, he happened to glance at a framed picture of last New Year’s VFW float--which was a tribute to Bob Hope. “It suddenly dawned on me that our new float wouldn’t be appropriate anymore,” Bachand said.

This year’s VFW float was supposed to show Uncle Sam astride a giant motorcycle, its sidecar packed with newspapers, their headlines declaring “Peace!” The float was to be titled “Welcome Home”--hardly a fitting tribute now, with military personnel shipping out to foreign soil.

So, with help from Festival Artists Inc. President Rick Chapman, the float got a new look. The newspapers are gone and, while Uncle Sam is still on the motorcycle, he’s joined by a 40-foot-tall Statue of Liberty. The new title: “Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.”

Okum said tournament officials greeted the new design by reshuffling the parade order so the VFW float will be last. “It’s going to be a tremendous crowd-pleaser,” Okum said.

Boeing Goes With an Eagle

Executives of Boeing Co. likewise looked askance at their original float design, which included a giant surprise package that was to reveal question marks. It was too late to change the float’s basic shape, so Lofthouse’s crew of artists at Phoenix Decorating overhauled the box, which is now to reveal a resolute bald eagle.

“Instead of the uncertainty, we want this to represent freedom,” said Boeing spokeswoman Nancy Lurwig. “And this couldn’t be a better time.”

And executives of yet another firm, Smart & Final Co., decided to take another tack for their float, which originally depicted a family of bears at a 1950s-style diner.

Smart & Final spokeswoman Lisa van Velthuyzen said that on Sept. 11, members of the firm’s directors happened to have gathered for a board meeting a few miles from the World Trade Center. Chairman and Chief Executive Ross Roeder was moved to seek a more patriotic Rose Parade float.

The new float will show the family of bears at a Fourth of July picnic. A bear that originally was to have flourished a restaurant menu will wield an American flag instead. Moreover, there’s room aboard for members of the U.S. Coast Guard, which also happens to be a key customer of the company.

Several other float sponsors, DiSano said, have requested new patriotic motifs. Many want bunting or dignified American flags in the hands--or paws--of the giant float characters.

DiSano said so many last-minute changes are unprecedented in living memory, spurring officials to expedite the tournament’s production schedule.

Officials have waived the normal design variance process that require a committee vote; now changes can be approved over the phone.

Officials of the three largest float builders--Phoenix, Fiesta and Festival Artists--said they are trying to avoid billing anyone for the extra expenses, mostly in the range of a few thousand dollars, involved in redesign or changes in decor.

Such changes are rare in the history of the tournament, which survived the Depression and a few wars.

“They always held the parade, even if it meant putting the queen and her court in a couple of cars and just driving a block or two,” said tournament public relations director Caryn Eaves.

She said security this year is being organized along the lines of the increased measures during the millennium New Year’s celebration of two years ago. Meanwhile, other surprises are brewing for the venerable parade.

Okum said he wants a spectacular prologue to further pump up the patriotic fervor. He also promised a military flyover, a tournament tradition in recent years, most famously in 1997 when the parade was buzzed by a B-2 Stealth bomber. A flyover Jan. 1, he said, might include a missing-man formation to salute those killed in the terrorist attacks. Officials are also considering such touches as riderless horses to honor the dead.

A few unexpected problems are cropping up as the parade takes on its new flavor--though officials seem to be taking them in stride.

“We had an Arabian horse group decide they weren’t comfortable going down the parade route in Arab garb,” said David M. Davis, secretary of the tournament, “which makes a lot of sense to me.”

Joe Delgatto, parade music chairman, said his committee wants to make sure that the 22 scheduled bands aren’t all performing off the same sheet of music.

“We don’t want them all playing ‘Stars and Stripes Forever,’ 20, 30 times down the parade route, in front of the same people. That will get a little boring,” Delgatto said.

He’s encouraging the musicians to consider patriotic numbers that swing, although one band has already claimed “The Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B.”

And one other problem lurks in that new color scheme. “We get blue from a flower called statice,” said Tim Estes at Fiesta Parade Floats. “The size of each petal is the size of half an eraser head on a pencil.

“That’s why we try to stay away from blue, to a degree. It’s the processing time--it’s horrible.”