Constable: Love is a rose, and owners of Warrenville business say kindness can be daily presence

Love always is in the air around Valentine's Day. But Sid and Kathy Fey, owners of a Warrenville business that turns real roses into works of art, have noticed another emotion vying for attention these days — anger.

Anger is ubiquitous on social media, but we also witness it firsthand in everyday interactions on the roadways, in stores and restaurants, on airplanes and even in schools, libraries and hospitals. This era filled with extreme political battles, racial strife and a pandemic on a path to kill a million Americans has emboldened ugliness. Sid experienced this when his longtime group of golfing friends suddenly felt comfortable airing racist and bigoted thoughts.

“These are my friends. I've known them for 40 years,” says Sid, whose efforts to enlighten them ended with donating his golf clubs to charity. But he and Kathy didn't give up. They founded LoveIsARose.org, a nonprofit charity that has given away individual packages of fresh roses to about 20,000 nurses, other health care workers, nursing home residents, first responders, teachers, grocery store workers and others whose jobs require them to care about the well-being of others.

“We have a mission to create a decade of healing and kindness,” Sid says. They've donated roses individually boxed to Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital in Winfield, Friendship Village of Schaumburg, Forest Glen senior community in Carol Stream, Leyden Family Services in Forest Park, Amita Health Alexian Brothers Medical Center in Elk Grove Village, Northwestern Medicine Delnor Hospital in Geneva, postal employees in Warrenville and grocery workers in Wheaton.

Each rose includes a card that begins, “We love you for who you are and who you have been.” The message thanks them “for all the wonderful things you have given to others” and urges them to continue being kind and spreading love.

“They were kind of gobsmacked by the kindness,” Sid says of the first group of nurses to receive the roses.

The son of Edgar Fey, founder of what is now Fey & Co. jewelers in Naperville, Sid operated a chain of jewelry stores called Matthew Erickson Jewelers (named after his sons) in Barrington, Wheaton, Naperville, Aurora, Lombard, Downers Grove and Fort Myers, Florida, before selling them to the employees in 1990. But Sid wasn't ready to retire.

The concept of selling things on the World Wide Web was becoming a thing. “There was a bald guy selling videos for $19.99, and I taught myself how to do it,” Sid remembers. He opened his Love Is A Rose business in 2001 in Warrenville, using a 60-step process to turn a fresh rose into a personalized, custom rose coated in gold, silver or platinum that will last a lifetime.

Sid discovered a way to engrave personal messages, such as “Will you marry me?” or “Happy Anniversary,” on a rose petal.

“The universe has blessed me with the ability to create things, so I want to honor that,” Sid says.

During her career as the marketing director for a major shopping center, Kathy started a Giving Tree at Christmas that allowed people to donate gifts to the needy. She also served as president and remains on the board of Leyden Family Service and Mental Health Center, which has programs in Franklin Park and Hoffman Estates.

With Kathy's help, Sid wrote a book, “The Being Game: For the Love of Your Life,” which takes readers on an inspirational journey that urges people to live in the present and begins with the question, “Who are you going to be today?”

Their goal to “create a decade of healing and kindness” has expanded into schools, and the couple give away heart-shaped kindness buttons meant to stimulate inquiries about “What does it mean to be kind?”

They're hoping to spread their message across the nation. They envision a society that exchanges anger fatigue for being “gobsmacked by kindness.”