Signs of the holidays aren't always obvious in the Southland -- no snowy landscapes in most places -- but there's one never-miss clue: Della Robbia wreaths from Boys Republic.
Della Robbia wreaths hang on doors and mantels from here to the White House, which has decorated with them every Christmas since the Calvin Coolidge administration.
Boys Republic, a private, nonprofit group home in Chino Hills, has educated, disciplined and guided delinquent youths for nearly a century. Serving sentences for auto theft, burglary, vandalism and possession or sale of drugs, residents stay for an average of nine months. The facility, which does not have fences or locked doors, houses some 168 youths ages 13 to 18.
Among the alumni are actor Steve McQueen and John Babcock, an award-winning Los Angeles television journalist and former executive for KABC-TV Channel 7 Eyewitness News.
McQueen, who died in 1980, credited the institution with changing the direction of his life and "making a man of me." His childhood was lonely, insecure and troubled until he had a minor scrape with the law and wound up at Boys Republic.
Babcock, who died in 1997, said in a 1987 Herald Examiner article that Boys Republic kept him out of prison: "I figured out very early that it was better to make Della Robbia wreaths then than license plates later."
Work on this year's wreaths began in January. The youths make weekly trips around the Southland, gathering liquidambar seed pods from Claremont streets and scouring the desert for beans fallen from mesquite trees. The natural decorations are cleaned, dried and wired to green plastic frames. As the holidays approach, the wreaths are adorned with fresh greenery and fruit and sprayed with clear lacquer.
Then, for three weeks, delivery trucks pull up to the "Pod Barn" and haul away about 3,000 wreaths a day. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, nearly 50,000 wreaths will have been shipped throughout the United States and to 17 foreign countries.
"We're not in the wreath business," said Jerry Marcotte, development director at Boys Republic. "But the wreaths are our primary means of introducing the public to our work with disadvantaged kids."
The proceeds help defray the cost of running the institution, where youths attend a campus high school that is part of the Chino Unified School District. They gather academic work experience on the wreath project and other programs, including raising crops to feed beef cattle on their 200-acre ranch.
