KTLA is Your Rose Parade Station. Gayle Anderson reports Ed Morales, the current Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association President, has chosen the 2025 Rose Parade theme, ‘Best Day Ever ‘. This theme is a celebration of life’s best moments – those unexpected times that bring a smile, warm our hearts, and fill us with joy.

While for donor families, losing a loved one represents one of the most difficult moments of their lives, organ, eye, and tissue donation brings a ray of hope. It allows them to see their loved ones live on in others, creating a legacy that continues in transplant recipients. The 2025 OneLegacy Donate Life float, Let Your Life Soar, features a vibrant scene inspired by the beloved Japanese celebration of Children’s Day. Colorful Koi No Bori (Flying Fish Flags), or windsocks shaped like fish, fly overhead. Streamers bear the family crest, followed by Koi No Bori in a sequence representing father, mother, and children in order of birth.

On the OneLegacy float, the koi fish scales will highlight memorial floragraph portraits. Floragraph portraits from organic materials represent donors who gave the gift of life. The windsocks will soar over a garden of flowering trees featuring stone lanterns and a beautiful bridge. Organ, eye, and tissue recipients will ride on the float, sharing their gratitude for their donors’ gift of life. Living donors will walk alongside the float, showing the power of living donation. The OneLegacy Let Your Life Soar float showcases the Japanese culture and the tradition of Children’s Day, or Kodomo no Hi in Japan. Children’s Day occurs during Golden Week, a collection of four national holidays celebrated within seven days and one of Japan’s three busiest holiday seasons. Families raise their carp-shaped windsocks in Japan, which have been flying for generations. In Japan, the koi fish represent strength, courage, and health.

These same attributes define not only those who chose to give the gift of life but also their families afterward and their recipients. Koi fish are also believed to represent perseverance, stemming from an ancient legend of a golden carp that swam upstream and became a dragon. The entire donation and transplantation community exemplifies perseverance from the families that carry on the legend of their loved ones to the medical community For Immediate Release NEWS tirelessly dedicated to donation and transplantation. The 2025 OneLegacy Donate Life Float honors tradition, family, legends, and love within the donation community.

Award-winning float deAward-winning float designer Charles Meier created the beautiful design that honors this quintessential Japanese celebration. The float will be brought to life under the direction of the OneLegacy Donate Life float’s new crew chief, Travis Woodward. Every year, more than a thousand volunteers spend countless hours decorating the float with organic materials from October through December, with the goal of finishing it for its journey down the streets of Pasadena on New Year’s Day.

The OneLegacy Donate Life Rose Parade float is produced by OneLegacy and made possible thanks to dozens of donation, transplantation, healthcare, and family care organizations from across the country, who join OneLegacy to sponsor our float every year, and individuals who help make donation and transplantation possible. As the world’s most visible campaign to inspire organ, eye, and tissue donation, the OneLegacy Donate Life float in the Rose Parade, presented by Honda, is a powerful reminder of the impact everyone can make. By registering today to become an organ, eye, or tissue donor, you can potentially save or enhance the life of one of the over one million people in need of transplants each year. Your decision to donate is a testament to the power of community and the value we place on life.

Visit www.onelegacy.org/register or Registerme.org for those outside of California to register.

About OneLegacy: OneLegacy is the nonprofit organization dedicated to saving lives through organ, eye and tissue donation in seven counties in Southern California: Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara and Kern. It serves more than 200 hospitals, 9 transplant centers, a diverse population of 20 million donors and families across the region and waiting recipients across the country. Becoming an eye, organ or tissue donor is easy and can be done by registering online at donateLIFEcalifornia.org/OneLegacy or by “checking YES” at your local DMV. For more information, visit OneLegacy.org