Clark County ready for Rose Festival

‘Excessive” celebration? Pshaw, we’re proud of that. There’s no such thing as partying too hardy when it comes to our beautiful region, our awesome people, our way of life.

“Excessive Celebration” is the theme of this year’s Rose Festival in Portland. Feel free to do your own end-zone happy dance at the profusion of fun: carnivals and exhibits, concerts and dances, visiting Navy and Coast Guard ships, live theater and a youth film festival, foot and race-car and milk-carton-boat races, fireworks over and dragon boats upon the Willamette River — plus the June 11 coronation of the Rose Festival queen, followed by the centerpiece of it all, the Grand Floral Parade.

Yes, it’s all Portland-centric, but that’s OK, since Portland is just a suburb of Clark County.

Always occupying a special place in the parade is the Battle Ground Rose Float, the only ongoing entry in the annual parade that’s built entirely by community volunteers and with community donations. Many floats advertise clubs and commercial interests — there’s an Alaska Airlines float, a Spirit Mountain Casino float, a Reser’s Fine Foods float — but Battle Ground’s is the only one by, for and about the residents of a whole community.

This year, the Battle Ground Rose Float will recall the days of patriotic music on fragile, circular platters once known as “records” and close-harmony singing by smiling girls in USO uniforms. Titled “Old Time Blast,” the float will also feature a larger-than-life Victrola, as well as some grinning, waving, probably harmless sticks of dynamite. Also grinning and waving, while miming to an Andrews Sisters soundtrack, will be the princesses of Battle Ground’s hometown Rose Court: Allyson Barnes, Katie Beard, Malia Meyer and Shelby Woodside.

Battle Ground history also continues to be present at the Rose Festival in the local celebrity Rose Wade, who graduated from Battle Ground High School in 1943, went to work in the Kaiser shipyards and survived the Vanport flood of 1948. Wade is the alter ego of Battle Ground resident Adeena Rose, 21, who has been volunteering her time as the embodiment of this historic “Rosie the Riveter” for the festival’s Living History program for a few years now. (Wade even traveled in August to Richmond, Calif., to be part of the largest-ever gathering of Rosie the Riveters, as officially noted by the Guinness Book of World Records: 1,083 Rosies in one spot. That’s a whole lot of “We Can Do It!”)

Princess Jayne

Here’s another great Clark County connection to the Rose Festival: Emily Jayne, 18, has been named a member of the Rose Festival Court. That’s a group of up to 15 outstanding and community-minded young women chosen from Portland-area high schools who then serve as leadership-development mentees and festival ambassadors visiting community and senior centers, youth and civic groups and nonprofit agencies. In addition to having excellent grades and obvious good character, Rose Festival Court applicants must show poise and preparation during interviews and while making a speech before a panel of judges. One member of the court will be named queen just before the Rose Festival Parade.

Jayne, who commutes to St. Mary’s Academy in Portland, said in her speech that the city is exactly like a rose bud: a beautiful whole made of diverse petals. It’s the food and coffee capital of the world, she said. It’s got hipster culture and “an amazing fashion sense.”