The Toluca Lake Garden Club and other neighbors and friends held a “Rose Parade” on September 15 to honor the 100th birthday of beloved community member Rose Chimo. Attendees processed past the guest of honor with live music, flowers and signs bearing heartfelt greetings, and the TLGC presented her with a commemorative proclamation and a framed flag that was flown over the U.S. Capitol, gifted by Congressman Tony Cardenas.
Chimo’s daughter, Paulanna Cuccinello, says her mother was “overwhelmed to say the least” by the surprise celebration. “My sister Valeria was here from Seattle with her husband, Johnny, son Massimo and his family, and other son Peter from Germany,” she shares, adding that one of her favorite moments was “having the eight-piece mariachi band stroll from Forman and Navajo to my mom, who was in the middle of the street, and she was awestruck.”
Chimo is a longtime resident and active participant in the neighborhood with which she shares a birth year. Cuccinello notes that her mother even remembers “being on the lake as a young girl as her father had a crew dredge it, and Alan Ladd walked out onto his deck.” A member of the TLGC for 51 years, Chimo operated Flowers by Anthony Rose for 45 years with her husband, Tony, in the Riverside Drive location now occupied by Cuccinello’s store, Pergolina. Her daughter concludes, “To have had over 100 neighbors and friends and family celebrate this wonderful woman in a time when the world is topsy-turvy is a blessing and gives us all hope.”