Local Hands Build Rose Parade Float
While some spent their winter break relaxing at home, one Vermillion resident spent it helping build an award-winning parade float.
The Rose Parade in Pasadena, Calif., has been held since 1890 and has become an annual New Year’s Day tradition. Thirty-nine floats participated in the event, and for the first time in 10 years, South Dakota was represented.
Solveig Korte is a retired USD professor, whose daughter happens to be a kindergarten teacher in Pasadena. For the last few years, Korte has been traveling over the holiday to visit.
Three years ago, they learned people could volunteer to help build the floats and have done so each year since.
“In about September, she [Kourt’s daughter] saw an announcement that South Dakota was going to have a float,” Korte said. “So I called up Pierre to say, how do we do this.”
The mother-daughter duo worked a total of 16 hours on the float. They glued and placed organic materials onto the base, including rice, sesame seeds and roses. Each float must be completely covered in botanical materials.
“When you work on a float, you get very invested in that float,” Korte said. “It’s like ‘see the eye on that pheasant’ and ‘see the beak on that fish,’ I did that.”
While it may not be something Korte wants to do all day, every day, she said it was an experience she would continue in future years, especially if South Dakota has another float.
“Some of things we did, in and of themselves, were really boring and or tedious, but it’s that whole experience of contributing to the state and the tourism, and just being a part of something so special,” Korte said.
The flat was adorned with Mount Rushmore, bison, pheasants, jackalopes, the Dignity Statue and a medicine wheel. It even won the Americana Award, which recognizes the most outstanding depiction of national treasures and traditions. However, it did not feature a coyote to represent USD.
“The first thing that several people said was, ‘there’s no coyote on here’ and ‘there needs to be a coyote on this float,’ and we did feel like that was missing,” Korte said.
Despite the lack of coyote representation on the actual float, Korte and her daughter wore USD shirts to represent the Coyotes.
