Owners of Coatesville Flower Shop offer roses, ask people to share with 11 others, to honor daughter’s memory
By Mike McGann, Editor, The Times
Greg DePedro, owner of the Coatesville Flower Shop, surrounded by roses that will be given out for free Thursday, with one condition: those getting the dozen roses, must keep only one, and then pass the others onto 11 other people. The rose giveaway, which totaled 8,000 roses last year, was inspired by DePedro’s late daughter, who while battling cancer, asked for people to “do something nice for someone” as the best way to help her as she fought cancer.
COATESVILLE — If you see people in the area carrying a single rose and a gentle smile on their faces on Thursday, assume that somewhere, somehow, Lisa DePedro is pleased.
On the eighth anniversary of her death from cancer, Thursday, her parents, family, friends and just local folks touched by her legacy will be giving out roses, partially in her memory, but also following one of her final requests that in her name, people “do something nice for someone today.”
On Thursday, the Coatesville Flower Shop will be giving out a dozen roses to all who ask, but with one condition: you may keep one rose, but you must give the 11 others to 11 different people.
The idea came from one of Lisa DePedro’s final requests. So many friends and family had stepped up to help the 30-year-old mother when she was stricken that she finally told people who asked how they could help her:
“Do something nice for someone, today.”
Her parents, Greg and Dorrie DePedro, who own and operate the shop, a city mainstay on Lincoln Highway, explained this week, that the rose giveaway came from that simple request, and maybe to keep a small part what of made their daughter special, alive.
“I didn’t want anyone to forget her,” Dorrie DePedro said.
Not likely, thanks in part to this tribute, which saw some 8,000 roses given away last year. Although losing a child is one of the toughest blows anyone can endure, the DePedros say they didn’t want the anniversary of Lisa’s death to be just a somber, painful and quiet day, but a celebration of a life cut too short and the spirit of someone, despite facing her darkest days, who still thought of others.
With more than a dozen friends and family taking the day off to help hand out the roses, and other members of the community stepping up to help — from the friends who bring fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies to the local deli that contributes sandwiches — the people who love and honor Lisa’s memory, helps the DePedros in ways that unmeasurable. Friends from as far away as California mark the day by buying a dozen roses and giving them out one by one to strangers.
“It helps us tremendously,” Greg DePedro said. “In a sad time, what better way to cope than to spend a day, surrounded by our friends and family, making other people happy.”
Working through their grief, the couple has been able to reach out to others who have lost a child, and in the helping of others, they say, they find some healing.
“It’s a fraternity that no one wants to be in,” Greg DePedro said. “There is nothing more terrible.”
Dorrie DePedro displays the framed image of the white rose sent to her by anonymous woman, who said in a letter that the rose — given to her some years ago in tribute to Lisa DePedro — lasted a month and helped inspire her during a battle with cancer.
As working and sharing with others who have lost, the mere act of honoring Lisa’s memory with the roses has had a healing effect for the DePedro family.
And at least once, the single rose appears to have offered more than just a smile, but enough hope to beat a dire prognosis.
Some years ago, according to the DePedros, after the rose tradition began, a woman was leaving Brandywine Hospital after getting bad news: she had cancer and it didn’t look good. As she was leaving and even before she could call her husband with the news, someone gave her a single white rose.
The woman put the rose in a vase and began treatment. For reasons no one seems to understand, the rose remained in bloom for a full month. Months later, after the woman had beaten cancer, she wrote the DePedros an anonymous letter and enclosed a picture of the white rose, thanking them, and noting that every day she looked at the rose, and as it kept in bloom, her hope grew with each day her outcome might prove to be as miraculous as the longevity of the rose.
Dorrie DePedro clings to a framed image of a white rose and her voice breaks a little as she talks about it:
“We still don’t know who she is,” she said. “She’s remained anonymous, but it’s an amazing story.”
