It’s back, once and floral

The Fleet of Flowers returns to Depoe Bay

By Eliot Sekuler

For the TODAY

For the city of Depoe Bay, the Memorial Day weekend Fleet of Flowers event has become an annual civic undertaking, a colorful means for the maritime community to honor those lost at sea and to remember a tragic incident in which two brave fishermen died while on a selfless search and rescue mission.

For Sun City, Arizona’s Cece Simonelli, 85, the event has a more personal meaning.

Fleet of Flowers was initiated in 1945 to honor her father, Roy Bower, who, along with another fisherman, John Chambers, lost his life nine years earlier in a courageous attempt to rescue three other mariners whose boat had foundered in a storm. Bower died in the wind and high seas off the Depoe Bay coastline in 1936, less than three weeks before Cece was born. She is his only surviving child.

In the years that followed, the Fleet of Flowers event, happening this year on Monday, May 30, evolved as a memorial to all fishermen and other seafarers who have perished at sea and has become the focus of a months-long community effort involving many volunteers and the assistance of the US Coast Guard.

As in past years, about 15 boats, decorated with flowers and greenery, will depart from Depoe Bay harbor, sail out past the buoy and, within view of the bridge that spans the harbor, form into a circle. A helicopter will fly overhead and deposit a cedar wreath bedecked with flowers into the circle’s center. Then the passengers on each of the boats will toss flower bedecked wreaths onto the waters, about 1,500 in all.

The event had become a civic tradition long before Roy Bower’s widow became aware of it. She was more than eight months pregnant at the time of her husband’s death and, within days, she relocated to her sister’s home in Los Angeles, where Cece Simonelli was born. Her connections to the Depoe Bay community faded over time.

“Apparently, the organizers were unable to get in touch with my mom and she wasn’t aware of the Fleet of Flowers ceremony until she saw a write-up of the event in Time Magazine,” Cece said. Her mother eventually attended the event but Cece was unable to join her mother for that visit and it wasn’t until 2018 when she and her nephew, James Laird, made the journey. Cece, an artist who works in oil paint and pastels, spoke at that year’s Fleet of Flowers ceremony and regards the event as a priceless memory.

“It’s such a beautiful thing for them to do,” she said. “Where else in the world is that kind of thing being done?”

According to Kathy Wyatt, who has served as president of the Fleet of Flowers non-profit organizing group for the past eight years, the event is a natural way for Depoe Bay’s residents to observe the Memorial Day holiday.

“We are a fishing community and it’s a great way for us to come together and volunteer on a meaningful project,” said Wyatt, who, along with fellow organizer Clary Grant, works for more than five months each year to put all of the ceremony’s elements into motion. “We start working in January to get the program ready. And then, a week before the event, we get the cedar boughs cut and bring them to the Depoe Bay Community Hall where we attach the flowers.” The city of Depoe Bay makes the Community Hall available for the organizers’ use and provides a $3,000 grant to fund the event. Other supporting organizations include the Coast Guard Auxiliary and the town’s chamber of commerce.

The annual Fleet of Flowers has drawn national attention for its compelling history and colorful ceremony and is noted as an annual event in many guidebooks and travel articles. The event had taken place without interruption until 2020, when the pandemic caused a one-year pause in its observance. In 2021, a scaled-down event was held without advertising, simply as a means to maintain Depoe Bay’s long-standing tradition.

“This year, we’re beginning to get back to where it was before,” Wyatt said. “It’s pretty exciting,”

The event begins at 11 am at the Depoe Bay Harbor. For more information, go to the Fleet of Flowers page on Facebook.