Rotary Community Heroes of Hope
Introducing "Rotary Community Heroes of Hope" - a podcast dedicated to showcasing the profound impact of Rotary in District 5330 and beyond. Join us as we explore the remarkable stories of rotary heroes and initiatives that are transforming communities and creating hope around the world.
Rotary Community Heroes of Hope
Parading Hope: Rotary's Artistic Collaboration at the Iconic Rose Parade
Join us on the Rotary Heroes of Hope podcast as we unlock the secrets behind the Rotary Rose Parade Float with none other than Gene Hernandez, the President of the Rotary Rose Parade Float Committee. Prepare to be enchanted by the meticulous artistry and logistics that go into crafting this floral wonder. From selecting top-notch designers and builders to sourcing vibrant blooms from Southern California, Mexico, and South America, Gene unveils the year-long journey behind the scenes. Discover the partnership with Phoenix Decorator and the sophisticated choreography involved in getting the float to Pasadena for its moment of glory.
Explore the dynamic collaboration between renowned service organizations like Rotary, Kiwanis, Optimist, and Lions during this iconic parade. Gene shares insights on the vital discussions among international presidents as they tackle common challenges such as membership and fundraising, all while leveraging the parade for unmatched global exposure. We delve into the parade's intrinsic value, not only as a branding powerhouse but also as a fun, engaging project for members and a magnet for potential recruits. Stick around for practical tips on securing tickets and immersing yourself in the vibrant spectacle of the Rose Parade.
Welcome to the Rotary Heroes of Hope podcast. I'm your host, judy Zolfakar, proudly serving as the current district governor for Rotary District 5330. Co-hosting with me is Jamie Zinn, our esteemed immediate past district governor. Heroes of Hope brings to light the remarkable stories of impact from Rotarians within our district. Our episodes shine a spotlight on transformative community projects taking root in our region and extend their reach to initiatives making waves on a global scale. Each story is a testament to the profound influence Rotarians exert on the lives of individuals and communities we are committed to serving. Join us in this inspiring journey. Dive deeper into the world of Rotary with us and witness firsthand the extraordinary ways in which Rotary touches lives, and witness firsthand the extraordinary ways in which Rotary touches lives and reshapes our world. Welcome to the Rotary Heroes of Hope podcast, where hope takes center stage and the heroes are the Rotarians among us, turning vision into action. How are you doing today, judy?
Speaker 2:I am doing great Good. Well, I am excited because today we have a fabulous guest, mr Gene Hernandez, who I'm going to let him introduce himself here momentarily, but he is the president of the Rose Parade Float Committee that deals with the rotary float that is in the Rose Parade every year. So, he is here to share with us all the excitement about that, about how you can be an ambassador, how you can go down and actually decorate and, if you want to, he has a way for you to be able to walk or ride.
Speaker 1:I know I'm getting my walk and shoes ready, gene, so let's let you take it away, tell us all about it and let's have this conversation.
Speaker 3:All righty. Well, first, thank you for having me on the podcast here to talk about one of my favorite topics, and that's the Rotary Rose Parade and our float committee. I am this year's chair of the Rotary Rose Parade float committee. Not of the Tournament of Roses, that's a whole other ballgame. We are one small component of that, but we've been in the tournament for over 30 years, consecutive years, so we're very proud of that fact. And basically what we do, we put out a float every year, which means we have to find a designer and builder, then we pick the design we want, then it's built and then we put flowers on it. So that's in a nutshell. The designer we use is called Phoenix Decorator and they do about almost a little over a third, if not almost half, of all the floats in the parade, and so those floats they take place. We build them basically at their warehouse, their building area, which is um off the 210 freeway. Uh in, uh, oh gosh pasadena right erwindale oh no, it's not pasadena erwindale.
Speaker 3:Where's that rock quarry off the 210? It's um erwindale erwindale.
Speaker 3:Thank you, thank you, thank you. I think I know that by now I'm shifting gears from another panel. Uh, we build it in erwindale and then, basically, once it's built and flowers put on and I'll talk about that in a minute Then they drive it like three in the morning down the the highway not the free of the highway roadway to Pasadena, so it can be then judged to Orange Grove, where it's judged, and then the next day the tournament starts. So, basically, what we do, we, our committee, we meet with the builders, in this case Phoenix, who we, who we chose as our builder there's a number of builders, but we've been with Phoenix for a number of years and what they'll do, that and this. This occurs about february of the year, following the last parade so this is a year-long process?
Speaker 1:oh, it's a year-long process, yes not necessarily well to build.
Speaker 3:In fact I'll explain that. So once, once we uh pick the design that we want, phoenix will show us a number renderings and we'll say, boy, that's the one we like, let's go with that, take that to our committee, we all vote on it, and then we give them the go-ahead to start building on it. And they start building around early March and basically what they're doing it looks like a big go-kart kind of thing and they put the, the the wire, not the wire, the the steel on it first, then the wire mesh, then they shoot it with a polyurethane foam and then they color code it based on the design we chose what color of flowers are going to go where. So if it's orange, they'll put the where the orange flowers are going to go. They, if it's orange, they'll put the where the orange flowers are going to go.
Speaker 3:To put orange, they'll paint it there. If it's red for rose, they'll put red where the roses are going to go, and that's done probably june or july. So it's pretty quick that that that process is done. Then it's going to sit until we actually uh get closer to parade day, because obviously you can't put fresh flowers on a float for months Right and Phoenix gets their flowers. Basically they clean out Southern California of all the floral shops, every flower you can get, and then they have to go to many times Mexico and South America to get the remainder of the flowers and the colors they want in South America to get the remainder of the flowers and the colors they want.
Speaker 1:South America is really good about getting purples and blues, which is very rare in our neck of the woods, and there's how many floats in the Rose Parade? Well, that's a great question, and it depends.
Speaker 3:Generally there's right around 61 floats but about 98 events. So in other words, you'll have marching bands, Right, You'll have equestrians, Then you'll have a float, Then marching bands, equestrian and a float. So the whole thing stretched out to about a little over 90, but about 60 actual floats.
Speaker 1:That's a lot of flowers.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's a lot of flowers, because the only thing that's on lot of flowers. Oh, that's a lot of flowers, because the only thing that's on the on the float they have to be.
Speaker 1:It has to be, uh, vegetative of some sort.
Speaker 3:I'm just gonna say it has to be a uh, biomaterial. It can't be anything, uh, plastic manufacturer. It's got to be, uh, it's got to be a plant. Bark seeds, uh seeds, yeah, that kind of thing. It cannot be any, anything. They made one exception a couple of years ago when they were doing a tribute to Roy Rogers and they had a stuffed trigger up there. Who's Roy Rogers, that trigger? Yeah, I think it was Trigger, so he was that, the horse was stuffed and that was OK.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's interesting. So there's a lot of opportunities for Rotarians and non-Rotarians alike to come and join in on the building of that parade when it comes up. So tell us a little bit about that. I know the registration is open, so tell us about the process and how somebody can get involved in being a part of this float build.
Speaker 3:That's an excellent question as far as who actually can do this. Well, a, anyone can do it, because Phoenix is always looking for decorators for the various other floats. They contract with the Kiwanis Club to provide the vast majority of volunteers that work on all the floats, majority of volunteers that work on all the floats. We, the Rotarians, work on the rotary floats, so we get our Rotarians all over the world actually to come out and what they do, they can go on our website, rotaryfloatorg. Go on that website and it'll say decorator, sign up. You click on that and then you go down and you pick the shift you'd like to work. Now most of our shifts are already filling up very fast, but we still have a lot of openings on the first couple of weeks and I'll tell you the difference there.
Speaker 3:The first couple of weeks is when you start doing the dried material. So you'll be clipping the little colors off of the purples, off whatever those purple flowers or the mustard seed. You'll be putting those together because that's the material that gets glued on the float, the actual flowers. That occurs about three days before the turn of it, so they're still fresh. Those are the most popular shifts and they fill up real quick because people want to work with live flowers. So it's a process where you take the flower, you put it in a vial by the way, we need volunteers to fill those vials you put it in the vial and then you poke it into where that particular color flower is supposed to go and we have a crew that manages that, our foreperson, who looks and says, okay, today we're going to do this Today, here's where I want the colors, and so that's one job.
Speaker 3:There's a gluing job that's probably the messiest job where you're the one that goes and gets the buckets of glue and you paint it on the float and that's where the seeds and the dry material is going to go, and so that's kind of the process of the dry material is going to go, and so that's that's kind of the process. To sign up, and then, once you have your shift, you've paid. We we asked for 15 dollars per volunteer to sign up and that gets you a, a shirt, and that shirt we kind of uses your ticket to get inside the the building and once you get there, you register, or you're registered. You get to our float site. We have a table outside, we sign you in, we give you an orientation, and then we take you in and you start working.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. There's some other opportunities clubs, correct? Do you want to talk a little bit about that, Jamie?
Speaker 2:Yes, so our clubs have the opportunity to go and sign up and normally it's the youth or the community service person who will do that, and we take our interactors down and we take, of course, their parents via busloads and we go down there and as a group, they will sign up and they will also process, you know, the flowers and everything.
Speaker 3:And we really we appreciate the interactors because they're the younger ones that can actually climb up on the scaffolding.
Speaker 2:I was going to say it's pretty high A little more tentative on that.
Speaker 1:Well, and a club can participate, even if they don't go down to decorate, by being an ambassador club. Is that correct, gene? Do you want to tell us a little bit about that? That?
Speaker 3:is correct. Now, what I didn't mention is that, yeah, we have to pay. A float costs about $145,000. And all of that money is raised by our committee. We get a small bit from international. That was just last couple of years. We started getting that about $25,000. But the rest of it we have to get through sponsors and volunteers who just bring the money in. So that's. We created what we call ambassador clubs. So that costs $500 to be an ambassador club and basically you'll get a priority on a day you want to sign up to come down and put flowers on and, more importantly, you know that you're helping us offset the cost for a very expensive float.
Speaker 3:And we're one of the cheapest ones. We're only 35 feet, which is the smallest you can get, and 145 is. In the overall scheme of things, building floats is very cheap. You look at a Trader Joe's or some of the big boys and they're spending up to two, three, $400,000. Some of the big boys and they're. They're spending up to two, three $400,000.
Speaker 2:And also Jean, if I'm not mistaken. You can be an ambassador on an individual level if you'd like.
Speaker 3:You can, you can, you can, you can pay to be just an individual. That's which I am. All of my club is too, and again, that's it's. You're really donating to the float building and that's what we have. We really appreciate that, and you'll get a little. You'll get a jacket and you get some little items that say that you are an ambassador and you can wear that with great pride.
Speaker 2:And, if I'm not mistaken I don't know if you're going to do it this year or not, but last year one of the ambassadors you did a drawing and an ambassador got a ride on the float, for last year we did that.
Speaker 3:That was another way. We're very creative in how we can raise money, yes, and that was another way that we did a raffle, and the winner of that raffle, which is announced at our dinner, our holiday dinner, rides on the float or walks either one. There's two positions there's the walkers and the writers. The walkers and that's where it costs you 75,000 to be a walker, I'm sorry. I'm sorry 10,000, 10,000 to be a walker, 75, 10,000 to be a writer, 75 to be a walker. There we go.
Speaker 1:I was a walker actually one year, and I know uh 10,000 to be a writer, 75 to be a walker.
Speaker 3:There we go, we got it. I was a walker, actually one year, and I know Jamie, you were, and Judy, I think you were a walker too, correct.
Speaker 1:No, I'm going to be a walker. This year, jamie was a writer. Last year, I was a writer.
Speaker 3:A writer is there's two ways to go. The writing people think, oh, that's the way to go. Well, I don't know about you, but I don't like to sit, for you know five and a quarter miles and I got to be moving around and jumping, and that's what the walkers get to do, so we actually have more fun, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, and I will tell you, yeah, that space where you're sitting, the way you have to hold your legs, and all of that, yeah, I think walking is a better way, better deal. Yes, but last year we were very fortunate because not only was I riding, but Myra Allen from our Temecula Sunrise Club was the ambassador who won.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, she was very excited about that.
Speaker 3:And keep in mind that each year, our international president rides on the float too.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that's a really big part of it when you look at. We talk a lot about collaboration, working with Rotary Clubs working together, but also service organizations working together. And at the Rose Parade, tell us about how the three largest service organizations in the world get together and all their presidents get together.
Speaker 3:Sure, and that's one thing that we started, actually a number of years ago, where we have a.
Speaker 3:It started as a brunch I think it's a lunch now, but we started as a brunch where we would invite the international presidents of Rotary, kiwanis, optimist and Lions Thank you boy, they'll get on me if I don't remember them and Lions.
Speaker 3:Those presidents will meet and many times for the first time in their year Now, they'll go into a separate room while the rest of us, the entourage, will have brunch in another room, and the reason being is that they then can feel very free to let their hair down and talk about mutual issues and then of concern, and generally it's gonna revolve around ongoing membership, fundraising, those kinds of topics. And it got so popular with these international presidents that as a result of that, they decided to have a group that meets almost quarterly where they'll call each other and say, hey, how's it going? Can we share any ideas or information? So it turned out to be a really, really collaborative effort. I mean, we're all in it for community service, we all want to improve our communities. So we're not competing, we're not. This is something where we work together.
Speaker 1:That's a big part of it too and I love that collaboration. And you know a lot of people. Rotarians often ask why are we doing this? Why are we spending over, you know, nearly $200,000 to do and be a part of this parade? So what's the value added that we're getting Rotary and in general out of being a part of the Rose Parade?
Speaker 3:That's a great question, and two things primarily. One the viewing audience. Over a million viewers on New Year's Day and worldwide close to 6 million viewers will see this parade and they'll see the Rotary float and the advantage of a float. When our float wins one of the titles and becomes a banner float, going down, the announcers will spend extra time talking about Rotary. This is Rotary International. They made a commitment to end polio. They're, you know, 99% there. They work with communities improving their.
Speaker 3:And then we talk about our six areas of focus. You know health, businesses, education, women and children issues, and so I'm a clean water. So it becomes a real education point that people say, oh, rotary, I didn't know that's what they did. So where else are you going to get that kind of branding anywhere? I mean, it's one of the biggest events in the world. So people don't realize that. They think, oh, is this a kind of a Main Street parade? No, no, this is not. If you've been to the Rose Turn of the Rose Parade, it's a huge event, huge. So that's one. So that's a marketing tool for us to increase our membership, so that we can get more people involved and say, hey, look, this is what Rotary is all about. We go on speaking tours and give these presentations to groups, and it's always nice to say, hey, this is what Rotary is all about. We're really talking about Rotary, and that's the advantage, that why we should be doing this, and it's where are you going to get more bang for your buck.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and there's just so many opportunities and we talked about you know, anybody can come and decorate, rotarians can be members and we can walk and we can ride.
Speaker 2:It's amazing that the intrinsic value that you have with this particular event, it is a bucket list thing and I think what's great about it is we always talk about the best thing to bring a potential member to is a project. And this is a project, and it's a fun project. And not only can they participate in it, they can then go and watch the parade. And speaking of that, jean, why don't you let our listeners know how they can go out and get tickets to see the Rose Parade?
Speaker 3:Now the tickets are run through a separate tournament facility, an outlet that does that, and it's called something Seeding I'm trying to think of the first name of it, it'll come to me in a minute.
Speaker 3:Seating I'm trying to think the first name of it, it'll come to me in a minute. But they, they handle all the seating for the whole tournament of roses and you want to get there early and get good seats. You can get, actually, you can get uh like uh, stadium seating, or you can just go and park and stand on the side of the road and watch the tournament, go by and watch it there too. So there's a number of ways to view it. The the committee gets, we get our seats so that we're right at the beginning of the parade, right at Green Street and Orange Grove, and we watch the parade start, literally kick off there, which is really cool because we see, you know, the jets fly over and it's just a wonderful, wonderful day to start and the real advantage and I'll be honest with you is that when it passes us, we can then leave, because there's another couple of hours that thing's going all the way down.
Speaker 3:Colorado Boulevard and traffic when it lets out is a nightmare, so we kind of beat that.
Speaker 1:That's lovely, yes, and it is sharpse, so we kind of beat that.
Speaker 2:That's lovely, yes, and it is sharpseatingcom, sharpseating, sharpseating. Thank you so much, sharpseatingcom.
Speaker 3:Sharpseatingcom. Yeah, and you want to get there, and they also provide parking, so you can get one of their parking locations and then walk to where you need to go.
Speaker 1:Well, gene, it has been a pleasure having you here to tell us all about the Rose Parade. I can't believe we're already talking about Christmas and New Year's already, but we are happy to do so and looking forward to seeing the next Rose Parade float for Rotary. Yes.
Speaker 3:I will tell you, ladies, it's magical. So please, please, listeners, come on down and have the time of your life.
Speaker 2:I guarantee you we will have fun do you want to give us a little hint on the theme for this year?
Speaker 3:I'll give you one of the hint. I'll tell you what it is. The tournament's theme is best day ever, best day ever, and so we morph that, that into this rotary On the road. With the rotary, our rotary hits the road and it's kind of a theme of a road trip, and so our float looks like a hot rod with a bunch of animals in the bed of the truck and they're all kind of pointing forward and excited to go on this quote road trip. And then we picked the music for that and that's the theme. So it's a great. It's really cute, very whimsical and I think people are gonna love it I love the cat hanging off the front doing a cell oh yeah doing a
Speaker 3:selfie that's it holding the cell phone, taking a selfie. Taking a selfie, yeah, taking a selfie, all right.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much. We're looking forward to going out and decorating and I'm looking forward to walking, and I hope everybody else is looking forward to enjoying it either at home or on site the day of.
Speaker 3:Please join me.
Speaker 2:All right. Thank you, Gene, for joining us.
Speaker 3:Have a great rest of your day, Thank you ladies.
Speaker 1:All right, thank you.
Speaker 2:Bye.
Speaker 1:So that wraps up this episode of Heroes of Hope. We are so happy that we have an audience out there listening. We want you to subscribe, share and tell your friends about the Rotary Community Heroes of Hope, because that's how we get the word out about the impact we're having in this world.