This year’s Rose Parade will include a brotherly duo unlike any other — one is an astronaut and the other a rose expert, and both will greet onlookers from the fifth float in the Tournament of Roses. Rex Walheim, 49, has five space walks under his belt and has journeyed to low earth orbit three times on space shuttle Atlantis — including its final run in July. (He once joked on Twitter: “I don’t fly in space often, but when I do, I only fly on Atlantis.”)
Lance Walheim, 59, oversees a 17-acre citrus farm outside of Visalia, and when he’s not tending to his blood oranges and mandarins, he’s writing books on how to grow roses. Of the dozens he’s published, his latest is “Roses for Dummies.”
The brothers will ride on the Bayer Advanced float called “Garden of Imagination.” It’s fitting, as the two brothers grew up tending their family’s vegetable garden in San Carlos, Calif. That was where Lance first cut his teeth as a gardener and Rex dreamed of flying planes whenever he watched them soar overhead.