A Crossville couple back home after volunteering in Pasadena to start the year, building a float for this year’s Rose Parade.
Lonnie and Evelyn Koeltzow worked on the Lutheran Hour Ministries float, which is the only religious float in the entire parade. Lonnie Koeltzow said volunteering with thousands of other volunteers from across the nation was an eye-opening experience.
“From a person just watching the parade, you don’t fully understand or appreciate all the work that’s involved with getting all of that material on that float,” Lonnie Koeltzow said. “And then there’s you know 40-60 floats.”
Lonnie Koeltzow said the float took hard work to complete, as it had to be completely covered with flowers. Lonnie Koeltzow said even though it was a lot of time cutting flowers, the experience checked off a life goal for the couple.
“I kind of thought this would be a neat thing for us to do, and so we kind of put that on as a bucket list item once we retired to go do that,” Lonnie Koeltzow said.
This year was the 75th consecutive year that the Lutheran Hour Ministries had a float in the parade. The theme for the parade this year was “The Magic in Teamwork”. Lutheran Hour Ministries’ entry was titled “Bringing Christ to the Nations”. Lonnie Koeltzow said the float design was similar to a blimp.
“It had ‘Team Jesus’ on it,” Lonnie Koeltzow said. “So the idea was that, you know, Jesus accepts everyone, and the idea of that was going throughout that float.”
Lonnie Koeltzow said the floats are usually kept for display days after the parade.