Celebratory trip home for Kenny Ortega

So it may not come as a surprise that the director of the parade scene many remember from the movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” will be leading Redwood City’s Fourth of July parade as this year’s grand marshal.

“I’ve dabbled,” said Ortega. “But this is going to be really special.”

With close to 50 years separating Ortega and his 1968 graduation from Sequoia High School, Ortega said he has become increasingly aware of how large a role the Peninsula’s rich theater and performance culture played in his formative years.

The 67-year-old said he feels fortunate his career has enabled him to move back and forth between a variety of genres, with his early years performing in theaters across the Bay Area as the foundation for his interest in such a wide variety of performances.

Though he was born in Palo Alto, Ortega spent most of his childhood and teenage years in Redwood City, where his interest in music, dance and performance was triggered at home, watching his parents, who he calls “jitter buggers,” dance to records in his family’s living room.

“I just remember dance always being there,” he said. “Music and dance was always there.”

What was an initial interest grew into a passion during Ortega’s high school years, when he worked with the late Ray Doherty, an English and drama instructor, and Jay Selby, a music teacher who also taught at the high school.

“I already had the burn, I already had the desire,” he said. “And they just really kicked me in the butt.”

Ortega said he is eager to reconnect with former classmates and others he met in the numerous acting groups, drama clubs and performances he participated in across the Bay Area as a child and young adult when he returns to the Bay Area next week.

He said he is also looking forward to reliving an event he considered a summer highlight as a kid. Ortega remembers sitting on the curb with his family and friends watching parade floats pass by and finding his grandfather, who was in law enforcement, after the parade to attend the rodeo and fireworks show that followed it.

“I’m going to be seeing myself out there as a kid,” he said.

Ortega will be joined by his 91-year-old mother, Madeline Kinnear, in leading the parade, which he said would feature numerous floats and acts by dance and musical theater groups, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts troops, as well as an equestrian team and Miss California.

He is excited his brother, Mark, and sister, Debbie, who are also Sequoia High School alumni, will be traveling with him and his mother from Sherman Oaks, where they currently live.

Though he frequents the Bay Area to see friends and performances at theaters where he once performed, this trip will be a way for Ortega to help celebrate the city’s sesquicentennial celebration, the parade’s theme, as well as the memories he has of the city, moments he said have fueled his long and storied career.

“What I’m enjoying is still being able to move back and forth into all of these different genres which has made my life really rich,” he said. “I’m a really lucky man.”

The Redwood City Fourth of July parade begins at 10 a.m. Tuesday, July 4, at the intersection of Brewster Avenue and Winslow Street in downtown Redwood City. Visit parade.org for the route map and more information.

anna@smdailyjournal.com

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