Oklahoma Man Creates Opening and Closing Ceremonies For The Rose Parade

OKC-News 9

The Rose Parade is a New Year’s Day tradition, attended by anywhere from 750,000 to 1 million people and viewed on six different networks with an audience of over 50 million people worldwide.

“Rose Bowl and Rose Parade have been an American tradition. They call themselves America’s New Year’s celebration and they have been doing that for, the parade 133 years,” said Ed James with Think Big Stuff.

Ed lives in Oklahoma, and has worked with the parade in past years, and when he missed the deadline to have a float in this year’s parade he came up with a better plan.

“I actually came up with this proposal for to the Rose Parade about two and a half months ago,” said James.

James’ idea was to encourage the parade committee to go bigger coming back from the 2020 covid year.

“I’d love to create a big flag team that can be part of celebrating the Rose Parade coming back.” Said James.

The parade committee loved the idea so much they expanded on it.

“To help open the opening ceremonies of the parade with LeAnn Rimes. And then we’ve also been invited to participate in the closing ceremonies with ACL country artist, brand new artist Jimmie Allen.” Said James.

The presentation consists of 18 flags each of them eight feet tall on twelve-foot poles.

“These particular flags that I printed on two sides of fabric, so it’s really 36 flags that are sewn together into 18,” said James.

“That took me right up until Christmas day. I was actually stitching on Christmas morning for three and a half to four hours.” Said James

James is now in California rehearsing the presentation that will feature about 100 volunteers.

“We hope we are going to create a brand-new tradition and I’m so thankful to be representing Oklahoma.” Said James

The big Rose parade flags have never been done in the parade before, but the parade committee is so excited about the presentation, they want to include them every year.