Posted on 07/15/2004 6:39:16 PM PDT by BenLurkin
PALMDALE - The latest, high-tech military aircraft - the city's biggest claim to fame - would fall under the gaze of the world if an Antelope Valley float can be prepared in time for the 2005 Rose Parade.
The float would be at least the second to represent the high desert in the annual Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena. The first was entered in January 1949, according to Valley Press archives.
The 1949 float was built around a children's poem titled "Wynken, Blynken and Nod," by Eugene Field. It was built in the shape of a shoe because the poem told the story of three fishermen who one night sailed off in a wooden shoe.
Next year's float, planned by Lancaster resident and Lockheed Martin employee Mary Rainwater, would feature flower-bedecked aircraft flying low over the desert.
Rainwater's plans include featuring an F-117 Nighthawk, an F/A-22 Raptor and a B-2 Spirit stealth bomber.
The planes would be situated at the back of the float, and they would be soaring upward from a scene of a colorful desert floor.
"When people think desert, they think desolate. We want to give the message of how beautiful it is," Rainwater said.
If this year's venture is successful, a 2006 entry could feature Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne spacecraft and its carrier ship, the White Knight, she said.
On Monday, Rainwater persuaded Palmdale's City Council to budget $15,000 for construction of a 35-foot float.
Palmdale's money would be combined with funds being sought from the Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman aircraft companies as well as the Walt Kuzyk law firm, Rainwater told the council.
"Lancaster is where I'm going to go to next and let them know that Palmdale did donate and see if they'd like to be a sponsor as well," she said.
All of the funds would be used to offset the approximately $100,000 cost of a professionally designed and built float, she said.
A builder who is recognized and accepted by the Rose Parade Association has been contacted concerning the project, Rainwater said.
The association already has extended an invitation for the entry, she said.
About one-third of the float's cost would be required to secure the builder's services, Rainwater noted.
"I think it's a fabulous idea," Palmdale Mayor Jim Ledford opined. "It's a great opportunity."
Rainwater's group, a nonprofit organization composed of eight members, will work to conduct a Valleywide benefit to raise the rest of the money later this year, she said.
Among those in whom she hopes to find interest are the commanders of U.S. Air Force Plant 42 and Edwards Air Force Base, the upper management of the aerospace firms operating at those facilities and private builders such as Burt and Dick Rutan, Rainwater added.
"What I'd really like to do is make the benefit successful so that it's something everybody wants to do every year," she said.
Rainwater noted she has been pursuing the idea for three years.
"It's just something I want to do for the community. And what I told the Rose Parade: What is unique about us is that it's not just a city float or a company float. This probably incorporates about 15 communities up here and about 1 million people. It's the whole Valley, and that's what's really neat," she said.
Councilman Jim Root suggested Rainwater meet with the band directors of the area's high schools to discuss the possibility of forming "an area-wide" marching band to accompany floats in subsequent parades if this year's effort is a success.
Rainwater said as many as seven people would be allowed to sit on the float as representatives of the Antelope Valley.
Her intention was to enter a float designed and built by local volunteers, but the parade association required professional construction, Rainwater said.
The theme of the New Year's Day parade will be "Celebrating Family." Her group's float would exhibit that theme because aerospace "is a family business" in the Antelope Valley that touches the lives of others in the family of the world, Rainwater said.
Building floats: A great way to occupy out-of-work aerospace engineers.
Heh-heh.
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