If you passed our Lebanon store on May 8 or 11 (Mother’s Day), you might have seen something that no one has seen in a long time.
Our costumed rose, aka Rosie, made a couple of appearances, soaking up some sun (after a decade spent mostly in storage) and waving to passersby on South 12th Street. The costume dates at least to the 1990s.
Greg M. Royer, the store’s assistant manager, remembered the costume from a corporate meeting.
“And then it just kind of came to me,” he said, “maybe it would be a good way to get people in the door.”
Shannon Fink, the store manager, located the box containing the costume in the basement of one of the buildings within Royer’s corporate complex.
“Nobody wanted to volunteer to be Rosie at first,” Shannon said, quipping, “so somebody was forced to.”
That somebody was Greg, who’s giving the thumbs-up in the photo above. The costume also comes with a leotard, gloves and shoe coverings.
“I was hoping that somebody else would want to do it,” he said.
But the Royer family is nothing if not hands on when it comes to the flower business, so it should come as no surprise that Greg’s grandfather, Ken Royer, and uncle, Tom Royer, donned the costume in the past.
Greg, the great-grandson of the company’s founders, Hannah and Lester Royer, is the fourth generation of the family to work for Royer’s.
He’s the third generation to play Rosie.