Remembering the day when a 13-year-old boy stole the show with the most beautiful rose of all

A father's day memory from 100 years ago

Like so many lucky folks out there, being a dad is one of the greatest joys of my life.

Obviously, that's partly because of the love I had for my own dad, who was the best teacher in life that I've ever had.

I grew up wanting to be just like him.

Dad is the reason we all ended up in Davis, where he finished a college education that had been interrupted by his service in World War II.

A Forestry major at his beloved alma mater, Oregon State, he earned a PhD in Plant Physiology at UC Davis at the age of 47, with a masters in Vegetable Crops along the way.

Put simply, he had an extraordinary love of plants his entire life and was able to pass that love on to his five kids, though none of us had the deep knowledge of what makes things grow that he did.

He made sure we each had our own plot of ground in our backyard where we could plant whatever kind of seeds we wished.

Sunflowers were far and away my favorite, but my older brother preferred corn that he claimed grew so fast that you could pull up a lawn chair and watch it change right before your very eyes.

Dad loved the mighty Douglas Fir and insisted that every December our home would be blessed with a Christmas tree that had been grown in his home state of Oregon.

On summer evenings, Dad would take us for walks around the small town of Davis, pointing out and telling us the names of the wide variety of plants and trees in neighbors’ yards and marveling over how many species could grow in our adopted hometown.

He seemed genuinely amazed that both palm trees and mighty redwoods could thrive in the same climate, along with such less popular fruits as pomegranates and persimmons.

We had two highly productive apricot trees in our backyard, and dad would let us pick a box or two and sell them to the proprietors of the old State Market downtown to enhance their "just picked" selection of fruits and vegetables.

In the summers when he was in graduate school he got a job as a tomato inspector to help pay the rent, frequently taking one or two of us on rides over the backroads of Yolo County back when tomatoes and sugar beets were king and UC Davis had yet to invent its world famous tomato harvester.

He'd give me a nickel every time I'd spot a tomato hornworm in one of the fields he was paid to inspect.

Dad never met a flower he didn't like, but in his mind, flowers were to be grown, not bought.

He loved orchids and glads and hydrangeas and tulips. Roses and daffodils and begonias and iris. Cherry blossoms and almond blossoms and the little yellow flowers that ultimately yield bright red tomatoes.

He even loved dandelions.

His all-time favorite, however, was clearly the magnificent chrysanthemums that he planted in every unused space in the backyard, knowing they would bloom in the fall when most other flowers were long gone.

When we'd head to the Pacific Northwest on summer vacations, Dad would regularly pull into small towns and drive around the neighborhoods to admire the various flower gardens, frequently knocking on a stranger's door to discuss a particularly spectacular bloom.

One time in the small Oregon lumber town of Oakridge we stopped in front of a modest home completely surrounded by flowers, with the master gardener outside tending to them as we pulled up.

After half an hour or so of talking and admiring the flowers, Dad called me over and said the man in the coveralls was named Laddie Gale, and years before, in 1939, he had been the star of the University of Oregon's national championship basketball team known as the Tall Firs. It was the first NCAA basketball championship ever held.

Forget the flowers, I thought, let's talk basketball.

Much of Dad's love for flowers was nurtured while he was growing up in Portland, where the abundant rainfall helps all manner of species to bloom. We used to take walks in the thick woods in and around Portland hoping to find a rare trillium, though we never accomplished the feat.

Portland, of course, is known far and wide as the Rose City and as such is home to one of the most famous rose festivals and rose-growing competitions in the world.

The show, in mid-June, is sponsored by the Portland Rose Society that was founded in 1889 by a number of rose lovers in the city and is held in conjunction with the Portland Rose Festival that includes the much-anticipated Grand Floral Parade.

It may not match Pasadena's famous Rose Parade, but it's close.

There was a persistent rumor when I was growing up that Dad, as a 13-year-old Portland schoolboy, had entered the rose show on a lark and that his single bloom had won "Best of Show" against all the serious rose growers and hobbyists from around the country.

A likely story that none of us could prove or disprove, but kept alive by his two brothers and a sister, plus our Great Aunt Flo, a lifelong Portland schoolteacher who lived on the proper side of the Willamette and had a hand in raising my dad.

Dad would simply smile when the topic came up and giggle to himself, never putting the rumor to rest, but never giving us much hope that it was actually true.

Then one day, after my mother's death in 2008 (Dad passed away in 1987), my sisters and I were sorting through some old newspaper clippings and photographs that had been sitting unsorted for decades in a cardboard box in Mom's closet.

And there it was, a full-page story about both the Rose Festival and the Rose Show in the Morning Oregonian, dated June 17, 1925.

"The choicest blooms in all Rosaria," the story began, describing the scene of thousands of flowers being judged and displayed during the festival, which had concluded on June 15.

Jimmie Dunning, 13, was the grand sweepstakes winner at the 1925 Portland Rose Show (The Morning Oregonian, June 17, 1925)

"It took a little boy, Jimmie Dunning, of East Twenty-ninth and East Yamhill Streets, a student of Sunnyside School, to win the Grand Sweepstakes of the entire Rose Show with a handsome Frau Karl Druschke, a hardy white blossom with magnificent stem and unblemished foliage," the story went on as tears began to roll down my face.

The story was true.

Why Dad had never bragged about it or had the newspaper framed in the hallway, I don't know.

"This rose was chosen by the judges after careful deliberation and a thorough inspection of every rose in the auditorium. To Jimmie Dunning will go a silver medal, awarded by the American Rose Society."

Several Father's Days ago, my Sweetheart, after much research, presented me with a mail-ordered Frau Karl Druschke that we immediately planted in the flower bed in our backyard.

It took several years when it seemed as if it was dormant and perhaps would never come to life, but one beautiful day this spring it burst forth with a stunning white bloom beautiful enough to rival the one Dad had entered in the Portland Rose Show 100 years ago today.

I am honored to follow in his footsteps.

Frau Karl Druschke, June 15, 2025 (Davis)

Reach me at bobdunning@thewaryone.com