Like many people, Ed Morales will be busy this holiday season merging his duties as husband, father, and partner at his law firm with the volunteering he does every year around Christmas.
Unlike many people, Morales’ volunteering will be taken up running a little hometown operation called The Tournament of Roses, the one responsible for the iconic parade viewed by more than 700,000 in person and watched by another 50 million Americans on television and broadcast to more than 170 countries.
A parishioner at St. Phillip the Apostle Church in Pasadena, Morales is president and chairman of the board for the 2025 Pasadena Tournament of Roses, which includes the Rose Parade and Rose Bowl Game, meaning his 2024 has been taken up with myriad tasks, travel, meetings, and obligations that come with the position since, as he points out, “this is not a figurehead position. You’re working side by side with all of the staff, board members, and volunteers.”
Of course, if any of this is wearing on him, it certainly doesn’t come across during an interview. Though the season is entering its stretch run, the “sprint” portion, as Morales calls it, he’s as cheery, as centered, as — dare it be said — relaxed as anyone responsible for putting on an iconic global event could possibly be.
Ask him how he can be so cool and he’ll tell you of the immense trust, respect, and admiration he has for the volunteers who are the backbone of the organization — of course, he’s been one for decades. Others will tell you that it’s just Ed being Ed.
“Ed’s busy, but never too busy,” said Eric Winschel, a friend and colleague who served on the Pasadena Jaycees with Morales. “He’ll always find time to talk. I can’t tell you how much fun and silly things we’ve done during our time volunteering. I guess that’s because, at his essence, Ed is a really good man. And he’s very good at getting things done.”
Born in East LA, his family belonged to the San Gabriel Mission Church, where he attended school. The mission, he said, formed “the center of our lives” and it was there that he learned, mostly by watching his mother, Anna, who was part of a woman’s group that made lunches for kids as well as ran the parish bingo game, that giving back was not something you do for your community but rather something that went with being part of a community.
As an adult, he applied that to organizations that provided community and family services, serving on the foundation board of the California School of the Arts and at St. Phillip the Apostle, where he also served as board president. He was a member of the Pasadena Optimist Club and the Pasadena Jaycees, an organization he eventually served as president.
“I can’t really say where this all started since I always have had a passion for volunteering,” he said. “I really do believe it is in giving that you receive. I mean, when you talk about the friendships that have been created, the goodwill, I’ve gotten so much more than I’ve given.”
It’s hard to argue the point given that Morales met his wife, Lisa, while both were volunteering with the Jaycees. Lisa also has a long list of organizations she’s worked with — something instilled in her by her family as well — and the pair function as a team in this regard.
When it came to one of the most important duties handled by each year’s president — the selection of a theme — Morales immediately turned to Lisa. She admitted the task was a bit “daunting” given that each parade’s theme determines everything from float design to the music played by the many marching bands.
Eventually, the pair came up with their choice, and at a ceremony held on Jan. 18 — fittingly, his mother’s birthday, who died in 2020 — Morales announced the theme: Best Day Ever. These were “those unexpected times that bring a smile, warm our hearts, and fill us with joy. From a once-in-a-lifetime experience to the simplest pleasures, each is indelibly etched into our memory.”
“We have so many amazing memories with our kids [Lainey and Jessie],” Lisa said. “When they were young, we’d be doing something and they’d be so in the moment they’d just yell out ‘This is the best day ever!’ And I’d think, ‘I want to be you!’ That’s the feeling we’re referring to, amazing moments like that.”
Morales has been able to participate in a year’s worth of amazing moments since one of the perks of being Rose Tournament president is that you get to travel around the world and tell marching bands that they’ve been accepted to participate in what amounts to the Super Bowl of marching band life.
“It truly is one of the honors of being president,” Morales said. “I’ve been to Japan, Mexico, Denmark, Panama, and you see the joy in their faces when you tell them. You see the love they have for the parade and it reminds you that in a world that can seem so divided, something like the Rose Parade, so universally loved by so many people, can bring us back together.”
One of the bands performing this year will be the joining of three local Catholic high schools — Don Bosco Tech, of which Ed is an alum, Salesian and John Bosco high schools — whose bands on their own were not big enough to participate.
Don Bosco President Guillermo “Memo” Gutierrez said the creation of the band has not only energized the student band members, who get together every Saturday to practice as one, but the entire school. And not just the kids.
“I have to be honest, I think the parents may be even more excited,” Gutierrez said. “It’s been amazing, I had no idea we’d be able to pull this off and not too many people would take that kind of risk. But that’s who Ed is, that’s part of his gifts. He’s just got such a calm and steady demeanor, he’s such a supportive man, such a good man of faith. It’s inspiring to be around him.”
Of course, Morales will tell you just the inverse. That it’s he who is blessed and inspired by those he volunteers with and serves. He’ll tell you about an early morning before a Rose Parade, coming upon a woman at the Tournament House and discovering it was Shirley Temple Black, that year’s grand marshal for the third time, who he then chatted with about the parade. He’ll tell you about the countless people who have approached him during or after a parade to say thank you.
“It’s those little moments, from my very first year of volunteering, that really make it worthwhile,” he said. “You want to tell them there are a lot more people involved in putting this on than you, but I think they know that. They just want to thank someone for keeping this tradition that means so much, shows all of us how much better we are when we are together than divided. It’s really wonderful. I’m just so lucky to be a part of it.”
