All the World’s a Parade for South Gate Couple

Bill Lomas loves a good parade. In fact he has organized many of them over the years, throughout the Southland.

The South Gate resident and his wife, Ronnie, own Pageantry Productions of Lynwood, which has been producing parades for more than 30 years.

“They live and breathe parades,” said Larry Harman, one of the directors of the Hollywood Christmas Parade, which Pageantry has produced since 1979. “They are a unique couple. Whatever you want they’ll get it, whether it is a camel, an elephant, anything. They’re your one-stop shopping for parades,” Harman said.

The 3 1/2-mile-long Hollywood parade with more than a million spectators is the largest parade produced by the company, Bill Lomas said. The smallest and the shortest is the one-block-long Borrego Springs Parade in San Diego County, which attracts about 1,000 onlookers. The company also arranges such local pageants as Christmas parades in Lynwood and South Gate, and the Bellflower Liberty Day Parade.

The company recently was hired to produce the Discovery of the Americas/Dia de la Raza holiday parade in downtown Los Angeles on Oct. 13. The parade focuses on the city’s ethnic diversity.

Bill Lomas, 55, started out by selling trophies after he moved from his native Canada to Lynwood in 1956. “I had to find a place to sell my trophies. I found that parades used a lot of trophies.”

Bill Lomas said he also found that communities need someone to manage their parades.

Ronnie Lomas, who has been married to Bill for more than 20 years, is heavily involved with the management. “We help people organize. We let them know how much security they need. How many bands, the number of clowns, balloons, horse insurance, things like that,” Ronnie Lomas said.

Even with the couple’s talent for planning, things sometimes go wrong. Hollywood Parade executive producer Johnny Grant remembered the time about seven years ago when a woman giving birth delayed the parade’s last entry. The woman began to give birth in front of the float as it was about to enter the route.

“We couldn’t move the float until the paramedics removed the woman,” Grant said.

Things turned out all right. They always do when the Lomases produce your parade, Grant said. “They are impeccable. They make everything mesh,” he said.

When Leone Jackson attended the recent dedication of the Paramount Adult School Child Development Center she got quite a surprise. Officials named the center after the 97-year-old former principal.

“I had to pinch myself,” said Jackson, who started teaching in the Paramount Unified School District in 1943. She was the principal of Harry Wirtz Elementary when she retired in 1960. She is a part-time teacher for the district.

For more than 20 years, Jackson taught English as a second language and Spanish at the Paramount district’s Adult School.

Hilda Batres, 42, of South Gate is one of 12 people who have been presented Courageous Citizens Awards by Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner.

Last November, Batres chased a motorist in her car after she saw him hit and kill an 11-year-old girl in a crosswalk near South Gate Junior High School.

Batres chased the man for about a mile before swerving her car in from of his truck, blocking his escape. Batres screamed for residents to call police. South Gate police responded and arrested the man.

The suspect is awaiting trial on vehicular manslaughter charges.

* Violinists Jane Chung and Thi B. Nguyen are the winners in the annual Rio Hondo Symphony Assn.’s Young Artists Competition. A 15-year-old La Serna High School student, Chung won $500 for her first place finish. Nguyen, 22, won $300 for second place. He attends the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia. Both will appear in a future concert with the Rio Hondo Symphony.

* Ernesto Howard’s poem won first place in a poetry contest sponsored by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

For his reward, the 13-year-old will read his poem, “My Easter Dream,” at today’s Easter Sunrise Service at the Hollywood Bowl.