Grand Marshal Paula Deen

Choosing a smiling celebrity to lead the Rose Parade each year as its Grand Marshal is no simple feat. The president of the Tournament of Roses Assn. must select a prominent public figure whose attributes and achievements reflect the event’s theme.

For example, 2010 Grand Marshal Capt. Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger III — who saved 155 lives by safely landing his stricken US Airways jet in New York City’s Hudson River the previous January — embodied that parade’s “A Cut Above the Rest” theme. Previous Grand Marshals include actress Shirley Temple Black (1939, ’89 and ’99), Brazilian soccer legend Pelé (1987) and even “The Muppet Show” mainstay Kermit the Frog (1996). Bill Cosby, Art Linkletter and Fred “Mister” Rogers served as the grand marshals of 2003’s Rose Parade, embodying that year’s theme of “Children’s Dreams, Wishes and Imagination.”

For 2011, tournament president Jeffrey Throop selected Emmy Award-winning TV cook, restaurateur and author Paula Deen to personify the parade’s “Building Dreams, Friendships & Memories” theme. Deen, 63, is the star of “Paula’s Home Cooking” and “Paula’s Best Dishes” on Food Network. She has published a dozen cookbooks and owns and operates the Lady & Sons restaurant in Savannah, Ga.

“I’m still in a state of shock!” Deen said in her trademark Southern timbre. “I thought I was maybe one of a hundred [people] … and I walked into my front door and on the chest in the foyer was a huge bouquet of white roses…. I went through my house screaming, hollering and jumping!”

Georgia-born Deen said she has never had the opportunity to attend the Rose Parade in person, but has been a lifelong fan of the spectacular. “It’s just one of those things that you do on the first day of the New Year,” she said. “You watch the Rose Parade [on TV], and then all the men in the household watch football all day.”

It was Deen’s life story that resonated with Throop. She lost both her parents before she turned 23 and married her high school sweetheart. Their 24-year marriage broke up shortly after the couple moved to Savannah, Ga., in 1989, and Deen, the mother of two teenage sons, found herself close to broke. Agoraphobic for many years, she parlayed the cooking skills honed while shut in at home into a successful catering service called The Bag Lady and, by 1996, had conquered her fears and opened the Lady & Sons.

“I started with $200. I’m living proof that the American Dream still exists,” she said. “And I’m all about family. Family is the most important thing in the whole entire world. It doesn’t matter what you’ve got or what you don’t have financially, as long as you have your family.”

Indeed, Deen keeps it in the family and runs the Lady & Sons with her boys Jamie and Bobby. Southern comfort food is their specialty. Fried chicken, cheesy meatloaf, deep-fried Twinkies and her world-famous hoecakes are perennial customer favorites.

The QVC-fueled success of her first two books, “The Lady & Sons Savannah Country Cookbook” (Random House, 1997) and “The Lady & Sons, Too!” (Random House, 1999) landed Deen frequent appearances on the Food Network before her own show, “Paula’s Home Cooking,” premiered on the channel in 2002. She has sold more than 8 million books and her lifestyle magazine, Cooking with Paula Deen, which launched in 2005, has grown to a circulation of more than 1 million.

A down-home cook who knows that the way to any new friend’s heart is through the stomach, Deen embodies this year’s parade theme especially well.

“Of course my career has allowed me to make so many friends all across the United States that I wouldn’t have [otherwise] gotten to meet,” she said. “I think my life tells a story of desires and passion and willingness to do whatever it took to get the job done.... I refused to give up.”

Deen’s duties on Jan. 1 will include attending a round of parties and functions, plus tossing the coin before the 97th annual Rose Bowl football game between the University of Wisconsin and Texas Christian University. But the duty she’s most relishing is leading the 122nd Rose Parade alongside her second husband, Michael Groover, in a 1923 Springfield Silver Ghost Rolls-Royce.

“Seeing all the people — looking into their faces” will be the highlight of her duties, she said. “I’ve finally done something to impress my sons!”

—Paul Rogers
Custom Publishing Writer