News : 50 years of lights: Heidi Koopman continues father\'s tradition

Heidi Koopman continues the Christmas lighting tradition her father began a half-century ago.

Fifty years ago, Larry Kersten put the first of his mechanical lighted Christmas decorations along the family's fence at 5598 22nd Avenue Trail northwest of Vinton.

Now, Heidi Koopman is marking the 50th year of the light display her father began in 1965, turning on the display on Thanksgiving night.

The display captures many of the social and cultural trends that Larry Kersten observed during his 30+ years of creating displays. There are rocket ships, and landing capsules. Many of the cartoon characters that inspired children are there, too: Scooby Doo, the Flinstones, Love Is.... characters, Cabbage Patch Dolls, dinosaurs and even the 101 (count 'em) Dalmations. Behind these displays are tens of thousands of lights, strung up in the trees that fill the yard.

Koopman begins in October, setting up the lights and displays, touching up paint and making sure the parts first made by her father keep working.

Ribbons

Many of the characters now appear with pink or yellow ribbons.

"The female characters wear pink in honor of breast cancer survivors; the males wear yellow to honor our soldiers," says Koopman.

Hours

Hours are 5-9:30 p.m. Monday-Thursday, and 5-10 p.m. Friday-Sunday. The light display continues through Dec. 27. As always, the display is free to the public; visitor do have an opportunity to donate toward the cost of the display, via a wooden giraffe named Shorty.

Santa and Mrs. Claus have been known to stop by on occasion to welcome visitors.

The display has survived time, the wind storm of 2011 which damaged many trees in the yard, and the deaths of Larry and Carolyn Kersten.

In the mid 1990s, Larry wrote the following poem to explain the reason he created and maintained the display.

I do it to bring a little Christmas cheer

If for only a few days a year

I do it to change the faces of little children of sadness and fright

Into faces of happiness and delight.

I do it to help warm your heart and soul

Something you can't do with fire and coal

I do it to bring smiles on the faces

Of people from near and faraway places

I do it to see the many colored lights glow

And place their pretty reflections upon the ice and snow

I do it to help you remember days gone by

And what could I have changed and why

I do it to help you remember the times when you were down and really sad

But isn't it more fun to be happy and glad?

I do it to help you remember the reason for the season -- it's God's birthday

Happy birthday, God -- we are glad you were born in every way

See an earlier story about the display HERE.