Gerald Freeny, a longtime Tournament of Roses Association volunteer whose devotion to community service and the parade fueled his trailblazing path to becoming the Pasadena association’s first Black president, has died, Tournament officials said Friday.
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Freeny was 66.
“Anyone who knew Gerald knows that being President was only one part of his life,” said current Tournament of Roses President Terry Madigan in a missive to Tournament members on Friday. “He was kind, gracious, and always tried to bring people together. He showed this same spirit while serving many organizations in Pasadena and nearby communities.”
That service in the community was vast, a service that also culminated in a long road to breaking a glass ceiling of a decades-old organization that was steeped in history, tradition and formality, and in a city with a history of cultural barriers.
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But he was among a generation rooted in the area, where trailblazing a path was not unheard of in an area from where Jackie Robinson himself blazed a trail to breaking Major League Baseball’s color barrier.
Those roots grew deep as memories of Freeny’s youth grew strong: At 4 years old, Freeny would first witness the spectacle of the Rose Parade — a curbside view on Colorado Boulevard with his grandparents and others.
There it was, among the most famous parades in the world unfolding right in front of his eyes. It was a mental picture that would fuel a dream.
He had other examples.
Both his grandmother and mother were “heavily involved in the community and all about giving back,” he would later tell the Star-News. They were templates that instilled in him the importance of volunteering and helping others.
It was a theme that ran through his work in law enforcement, but also as he immersed himself in such organizations as Pasadena Alumni Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, the Pasadena Police Foundation board, Pasadena Police Citizens Academy, the Rose Bowl Aquatics board, University Club, Pasadena YMCA board, Black Support Group at Cal State L.A., the Urban League Board of Governors, United Way Fundraising Committee, and the Pasadena NAACP.
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After graduating from Cal State Los Angeles in 1983 with a degree in business administration and finance and returning to the region, he and a handful of others who’d attended Pasadena’s John Muir High School together decided to join the Tournament of Roses in 1988.
So by the time activists were clamoring for more diverse representation, Freeny was among the five “white suiters” — the term comes from the white garments volunteers wear at the parade — to be appointed to the association’s executive committee in 1993. It was a response to activists’ calls that leadership ought to more accurately reflect the diversity of Pasadena. The group also included women, a Latino and an Asian-American.
“I have to give our leadership back then in ’93, ’94, I have to give them a lot of credit for stepping up and making this happen,” Freeny told the Star-News in 2018. “They saw there was something they had to do. It wasn’t a popular decision with everybody.”
In his 23 years at the Tournament, Freeny worked his way up the committee ranks, including a stint as chairman of parade operations.
Then came 2011, when his peers chose him, in the Tournament’s tradition of setting the succession of presidents ahead of time, to lead the 2019 parade and football game.
It was a break-through moment after a long road.
Freeny told the Star-News that he wasn’t the first African American to join the TofR, although there weren’t many at the time.
He noted that his positive attitude and being a “people person” made him part of the Tournament family.
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Joe Brown, president of the Pasadena NAACP at the time, said Freeny’s election showed the TofR had become more welcoming to all minorities.
“At this point I’m not overly surprised, but I’m delighted,” Brown told Star-News in 2011. “It’s a great thing for African Americans, women and minorities in general, seeing that glass ceiling broken. This is for future generations to look and say, `I can do this.”‘
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And they did. It would open doors to a more diverse leadership in the ranks of the Tournament of Roses.
Madigan, the Tournament’s first openly gay president, said Freeny’s chosen 2019 theme, “The Melody of Life,” celebrated music and how it brings people together through family, friendship, love and shared memories.
“This theme fit Gerald well because he truly cared about people and the connections they share,” he said.
Freeny once credited his daughter Erica, who came up with the theme words some years before, “and then we tweaked it a little bit.”
By 2019, he was ready to lead the parade, even while suffering from health issues.
He chose entertainer Chaka Khan as grand marshal that, aligning her presence with the theme of “The Melody of Life,” which Freeny said celebrated music as the universal language.
“Music has the power to not only bring us together but take us back to memories and moments as nothing else can,” he said. “Rhythm, melody, harmony and color all come together to create the soundtrack that defines our lives.”
At the time, he credited the sounds of jazz for helping him through his health crises.
He was a kidney and two-time liver recipient, parlaying his experience by placing the well-known Donate Live float right behind his grand marshal car in his presidential year, and riding on the float in 2022.
On Friday, Madigan praised Freeny’s pioneering path, but also his selflessness.
“Gerald will always hold a special place in the history and heart of the Tournament of Roses,” he said.
It was clear that Freeny too held the Tournament close to his heart.
“I guess what I’m looking forward to is going down the parade route,” Freeny told the Star-News back in 2011. “A native Pasadenan, seeing my high school buddies, my college buddies, people from the community, saying one of us Pasadenans made it here.”
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Freeny is survived by his wife, Trina, and their daughter, Erica.