The flowering of love / Strangers from Midwest send bouquets

The flowering of love / Strangers from Midwest send bouquets

The flowering of love
Strangers from Midwest send bouquets

Heather Knight, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, February 21, 2004



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Robert Yamaguchi and Raymond Mungo were waiting outside City Hall in the cold early Friday morning when a florist clutching wedding bouquets handed them one. The outside of the accompanying envelope read, "To The Happy Couple, " and the card tucked inside said simply, "With love from Minneapolis, Minnesota."

The men -- who have been together for 23 years and flew up from Long Beach to make it official -- were stunned by the anonymous gift of red roses, irises, lilies and white Gerber daisies.

"Oh, my heart just burst with joy when he handed up those flowers!" Mungo exclaimed as Yamaguchi carried them in his arm like a beauty contest winner. "Some stranger who doesn't even know us is helping celebrate the event -- it's very touching."

The couple's gift has been replicated hundreds of times throughout the week as part of a grassroots movement called Flowers in the Heartland.

Fueled by one oft-forwarded e-mail and a Web-log, callers from across the country have flooded San Francisco's flower shops, asking for bouquets to be donated to random same-sex couples waiting in line to get hitched.

Mike Ritz of Church Street Flowers in San Francisco's Castro district has received more than 50 phone calls from donors in Minnesota, Georgia and North Carolina. They asked for bouquets accompanied by a variety of messages: "I'm an 87-year-old grandmother wishing you well," and "To a Loving Couple, Have a happy life. Love, Karen" and "Nice day for a white wedding."

Ritz delivered a pair of red rose boutonnieres to Rhet Topham and Bret Maling on Friday with a card signed, "With love, from Dwight and Mike."

Topham said the fact that flowers are coming from pockets of the country typically associated with anti-gay sentiment shows that the gay-rights movement is progressing.

"Just that anybody in the Midwest supports what's going on here -- boy, it can only get better" Topham said.

With several hundred, if not more, bouquets already delivered through Flowers in the Heartland, it's hard to believe that it began just Tuesday in the offices of the Minneapolis chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

Gay co-workers there, Greg Scanlan and Timothy Holtz, were looking at photographs of happy newlyweds on www.sfgate.com, The Chronicle's online partner, and wishing they could somehow play a part in the historic marriages. Scanlan off-handedly remarked, "I've always said, 'If you can't be there, send flowers.' "

They continued surfing the Web to find a gay-friendly florist in San Francisco and settled on Thim Phan and his Flowers by the Bay on Brannan Street. Both men put in orders that day, as did a couple of other people at their office.

Holtz liked the idea so much that he told his partner, Edward Gillespie, about it that night. The two wrote an e-mail and, along with Scanlan, forwarded it to about 60 friends. It reads in part, "Call it The Big Gay Bouquet, call it Flowers from the Heartland ... Because straight or gay, we believe and we know many people who believe, support and celebrate the right to marriage. And we'd like to show it."

The e-mail has since been posted on the Web and forwarded around the country. Randi Reitan of Eden Prairie, Minn., received it from her sister on Wednesday, forwarded it to 100 more people and quickly got on the phone to a San Francisco florist.

"We got to be at somebody's wedding out there even if we were just the flowers," she said. "I just hope whoever received them just has this lovely, long life together ... . It doesn't bother me that I don't know them -- it's kind of fun in a way. You're connected to two souls."

The mother of four was particularly moved by the idea because her youngest child, Jake, 22, a senior at Northwestern University in Illinois, came out as gay when he was 16. People in the town where they used to live threw eggs at their mailbox, scrawled anti-gay epithets on their driveway, bashed their car's windshield and wrote anonymous letters saying Jake was "sick and sinful." Their minister told the family Jake could change.

"You just can't imagine what a message it is way back here in Minnesota. You turn on your TV, and there are more and more couples getting married," Reitan said Friday through tears. "I'm hoping whoever got the flowers realizes how special it was for them to do that. They're doing it not only for themselves, they're doing it for a young man back here in Minnesota who looks forward to finding someone to love, to cherish and to celebrate that love in a wedding and call it marriage."

Pham, who received the first call Tuesday, got six more calls Wednesday, 40 calls Thursday and 100 calls Friday. He's had to recommend other florists around the city because he simply can't keep up.

"I'm tired," he said, noting that his staff of three has been wrapping bunches of tulips, daisies, hyacinths, star-gazer lilies and irises at a frantic pace. "Everybody's just here cranking out different bouquets -- it's not like every bouquet is exactly the same."

And then, of course, they must make the deliveries. Despite the movement getting so big, many couples waiting in line still think there's been some sort of mistake.

"When they see the envelope just addressed 'To the Happy Couple,' they say, 'Are you sure this is for us?' " he said. "I say, 'Well, they just tell us to select anybody getting married and wish them the best of luck."

E-mail Heather Knight at hknight@sfchronicle.com.