from the President of the American Rose Society | First Word
A New Year, A New Season
W
elcome
to
a new year
by
and a new season of
776 Pinedale Court
sharing roses. The
Hayward, CA 94544
American Rose Society
invites you to “dive in”
jolene_adams@
to the activities of your
comcast.net
local rose society and
grow with us!
I had such a
wonderful time with all the rose friends I met last year
as I traveled across this country and into other lands
as well. I want to thank each local society, garden club
and ARS District for their kind invitations to speak to
them. I wish I could have been available for all the
engagements, but alas — there’s only so much time
in each year. And — when you are enjoying roses it
passes quickly.
ARS had two very successful Board Meetings
during the year and an excellent Planning Meeting this
past March. Although no National Conventions were
held in 2013, a very nice and well-attended National
Miniature and Miniflora Conference and Rose Show
was held in Winston-Salem, NC, in September. It was
at this Conference that many of the National Prizes
and Awards were handed out. You can find the Rose
Show awards listed in the Miniature and Miniflora
Rose Bulletin on the ARS website under Members/
Quarterly Bulletins or on the ARS site under Resources/
Interesting Links/Rose Show results.
Phillip Schorr of St. Louis, MO, was honored with
the Klima Medal for outstanding work for ARS in
education. His summary lecture was extremely inspiring
and he dedicated it to his late wife Jeannette. The path
he followed as he started out in roses is so similar to
that of each of us. He started with a few and that grew
to many, lawn started disappearing, new beds took
over in the garden, he re-planted a larger garden as
the family moved to another town. Then he became
interested in helping ARS with the yearly review of
roses for our Handbook. That led him further into
chairing the Roses in Review effort, then developing
Jolene Adams
the Quinquennial Review (every five years) and working
with the technical staff finding and adding new roses to
the Modern Rose database. (See page12.)
Luis Desamero of Studio City, CA, was honored
with the ARS Gold Medal. The article about this most
prestigious presentation is on page 8.
The Gamble Fragrance Award was presented to Tom
Carruth for 'Wild Blue Yonder', and the Fuerstenberg
Award for an American-bred, outstanding introduction
of the last 10 years was presented to Ernest Earman of
Alexandria, VA, for 'Let Freedom Ring'. These gentlemen
were not able to be present but sent letters of thanks
which were read to the audience. (See page 16.)
Appreciation goes to Cindy Dale, the National
Consulting Rosarian Chair for focusing her committee
on tidying up loose ends and formatting the revised
CR Manual (revisions mostly completed during Mary
Peterson’s term as CR Chair) for distribution on the
website. All CRs can download it free or order it from
the ARS Store by visiting ars.org.
Also a thank you to Pat Shanley for taking the ARS
Proclamations of Goodwill to China and presenting
them especially at the World Federation presentation
of the Garden of Excellence plaque to the Gardens in
Changzhou on September 28th.
A heartfelt thank you to the many donors who help
ARS in our educational outreach and for those who
write grants to obtain needed funding for research and
for improvements at the American Rose Center. And
most of all — thank you to all of our members who
send in $5, $10, whatever they budget for and mark
their note to us to “use this wherever it is needed”.
Unrestricted funds like these help us with the little
things — the unglamorous needs — the purchase
of laundry and cleaning products, for printer paper,
for scissors and thumb tacks and glue. No one gets
a brass plate nailed up to the paper towel dispenser
saying it was donated by Mrs. XYZ — but these are the
needs that often go overlooked. So, from me to you,
the special people who care and can reach out to help
— Thank You.
JANUARY/FEBRUARY | 2014 3