  Tiffany's interview notes with Aleene 2-12-09: On her second day of business, Mom got an order for a funeral. She had experience in preparing flowers for funerals but had never actually been responsible for the delivery of the flowers. This was an open casket service and the family had ordered corsages and she had to -- well -- pin a corsage on the dearly departed. She decided that someone else would have to do this task in the future. Two days later, she received an order for a Golden Wedding Anniversary arrangement. She picked up beautiful yellow roses from the flower mart in downtown LA. The only problem, the roses never opened so she had to supplement her arrangement with lots of tufts of wide yellow ribbon. She delivered her "ribbon tufts and sparse roses arrangement" about 30-minutes before the start of the event. Only one more problem, the greenery was so big, the arrangement hung over the dinner plates So with a few last-minute changes, the redesign was complete and the dinner party went on as planned. She also recalls that a lot of her business at the time was selling orchids for corsages. Orchids were a precious commodity during this wartime but she had found a local supplier and made a deal to get a steady supply. |
As our prior photo of
Aleene's first resale license showed, Mom opened her own
florist shop in 1944. The original post card announcement (pictured left) was printed on a Jefferson 1 cent postcard and announced that our mom and dad "Woody & Aleene" announce A New Floral Service - Arcadia Florist. Even though the announcement came from the two of them, it was shortly thereafter that Dad left for active duty so Mom managed the shop. As the second announcement states, at some point after opening, Mom renamed Arcadia Florist to Aleene of Arcadia (we'll get the story from Mom and let you know!) -continued below- |
