FLOWER HOUR BOEING WORKERS TREK DOWN TO JOIN FLOAT SQUAD.

Byline: Jason Kandel Staff Writer

PASADENA - Boeing engineering assistant Sandy Snow was looking forward to a break from helping make modifications to the space shuttle Columbia.

So on Friday he was helping cover a float with flowers inside a Pasadena warehouse.

``I get to work with beautiful flowers instead of cold metal,'' said the 35-year-old Lancaster resident. ``My tools normally are a computer and lots of paperwork. Today, I'm using scissors instead of a stapler.''

Turns out, it does take a rocket scientist to build a Rose Parade float. And scores of other engineers, scientists and employees of The Boeing Co.

During an eight-hour shift Friday at Rosemont Pavilion, about 25 employees from Boeing's Palmdale plant and 75 employees from the Canoga Park Rocketdyne facility, put aside their tools, calculators and computer-aided design programs for glue brushes, irises and roses.

They were finishing a 55-foot-long, 32-foot-high, 18-foot-wide float with a payload just slightly larger than a space shuttle known as ``Forever New Frontiers.''

The float is a portrait of an American teen-ager fishing alongside a woody creek while taking a break from science and math studies. In his hand, he's holding a toy airplane.

It took a team of about 1,000 Boeing engineering, finance and labor relations workers, among others, to decorate the float.

For engineer April Beaudine, who usually is busy deciphering metallic properties of certain metals to be used on space shuttle engines, working on the float was a welcome break.

``This is a much more exciting project for me,'' said the 27-year-old Westlake Village resident. ``I'm usually behind a desk at a computer doing some kind of calculations.

``Here, I'm playing with flowers.''

Beaudine was one of a group of Canoga Park Boeing employees who got on a company bus early Friday to put on the finishing touches of what would become the company's second entry in the Tournament of Roses parade. Last year was the company's first, and it was a success: They won a trophy for their space laboratory.

``This is really great,'' said Boeing labor relations employee Armando Talancon, 39, a Palmdale resident, as he took a break from running ``gazillions'' of mums and glue to co-workers dangling from scaffolding. ``I mean, you're talking to some guy from Chicago, where right now we have 2 1/2 feet of snow on the ground, and you always look at the Rose Parade and go, Oh that would be neat to go.

``Well, here we are to get a chance to work on the float. I mean how much better can it get?''

Every Saturday since Dec. 13, and every day since Tuesday, about 1,000 Boeing employees funneled through the warehouse, taking up thousands of flowers, glue and foam to create their company's $250,000 float.

At any one time, about 50 people could be seen working on their floats inside the lofty Rosemont Pavilion, directly across the street from the Rose Bowl. About 24 floats were being worked on simultaneously, each in its own bay about 75 feet long, and 30 feet wide.

Excited Boeing workers volunteered for the task within two hours of the jobs being advertised on the company Web site, said company spokesman Javier Mendoza. Boeing is the largest private manufacturing employer in the state, with 45,000 employees statewide, 42,000 of which are in the Southland.

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Photo:

(color) Palma Talancon of Palmdale, whose husband works at Plant 42, works on the Boeing Rose Parade float Friday in Pasadena.

Tom Mendoza/Staff Photographer