After a more-than-20-year absence, Gene Taylor is coming back to run the community’s Fourth of July fireworks show this year — but only to help facilitate the passing of the torch from one generation to the next.
David Palmer, the operator in charge of the city of Santa Clarita’s Fourth of July fireworks shows for the past 25-plus years, died in November of a heart attack, said his wife, April Palmer.
Former Santa Clarita resident Gene Taylor, who’d previously shot the shows 20-plus years before Palmer, said he plans to return this year to do the show in Palmer’s place, but only this one time: Taylor is returning to train the oldest of Palmer’s three children, Nathan, 25, who, Taylor said, is interested in picking up where his dad left off.
“I will do everything I can in my power to help him become an operator,” Taylor said in a recent telephone interview. “And if he plays his cards right, does the right job, then he can have the show in his father’s name.”
The operator in charge of fireworks shows is responsible for the operation and safety of a fireworks display. Taylor operated the Santa Clarita Valley Fourth of July fireworks show from the 1970s to the late 1990s. He didn’t remember the exact years. He only gave up the gig because he moved to Phoenix, where he currently resides.
Taylor got into the fireworks business young.
“I got into it because, in school, I had an affinity toward chemistry,” he said. “I had a lab in my garage that my parents allowed me to build.”
When he was in his early 20s, Taylor and his family went to a Los Angeles Dodgers game. He was blown away by the fireworks show. The next day, he wrote a letter to the stadium and asked for more information about who did the shows, how they did the shows and, taking a chance, asked if he could go behind the scenes to watch how they did their next show.
“They wrote me back,” Taylor said, “and they said, ‘You’re invited for the July 4th show,’ and, ‘You’ll be part of the crew,’ and, ‘Come on down.’”
That was the beginning of Taylor’s career. It took some time, but he got his license to shoot fireworks two years later. The first show he did was at a high school in Irvine. And he kept working after that.
It wasn’t a full-time job, he said. He got into sales to make a living.
Taylor moved to the Santa Clarita Valley from the San Fernando Valley in the early 1970s. He and his wife raised their kids in the SCV. Soon after the move, Taylor began his long tour of shooting fireworks for the community’s Fourth of July shows.
When he and his wife moved to Arizona, Palmer took over the show, which he would continue to do through last year. But Palmer had a brain bleed, his wife said, and that led to a heart attack, which led to his death on Nov. 14.
Taylor received a call in January with news about Palmer, he said, and a request for him to do the Santa Clarita show again.
“I didn’t really want to do it,” Taylor said. “I’ve got a very large show that I’m doing in San Diego, and my crew is going to be pushed. Most of my crew is not going to want to do another show the very next day.”
But Taylor couldn’t say no when he learned that Palmer’s son, Nathan, was interested in following in his dad’s footsteps.
Palmer’s wife said she’s happy that Nathan wants to carry on with his dad’s legacy. She’d really like this year’s show to be in honor of her late husband, who put his heart and soul into the Santa Clarita fireworks shows for so many years.
“The Santa Clarita show is a warm place in our hearts,” she said. “All three kids were born and raised in it. It’s a big family thing. When my husband goes out to shows, we all go out also, and we’re all setting up, and we get our hands dirty. He (Nathan) has been doing shows with his dad since he was 18, and he’s been going to shows since he was born.”
Palmer and his family lived in the Santa Clarita Valley for many years. They came to the SCV from Sylmar in 2008 after losing their home in the Sayre Fire. They moved to Texas after losing their business during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, they drove out to Santa Clarita just to do the Fourth of July show.
Taylor is looking forward to returning to the SCV to do what he loves. And he does still love it. He said there’s just something about fireworks — the smell of the smoke, the explosions and the blast wave felt from being up close.
“But besides all that,” he said, “one of the things that always attracted me when I was a young kid was that you go to this event, you sit at the park and you have your nice hot dog or your picnic lunch, and then the time comes, and way off in the distance you see these people moving around. They’re very small because they’re so far away. Then the sky gets dark, and you can’t see them at all. And the magic happens for about a half hour.”
