Editor’s note: This article was originally published in The Kewanee Voice’s print edition of the Holiday Herald.
The showpiece of the Christmas displays in Windmont Park is the footbridge over the park’s lagoon. The bridge dazzles with a huge light display which the Windmont volunteers set up each year.
But just how many lighted pieces are installed on the bridge each year?
A sheet hanging on the wall in the Windmont shelter house has the answer:
The bridge is 105 1/2 feet long
It is decorated with:
— 16 curli Q’s
— 32 lanterns
— Four trees
— 30 swags
— 260 feet of rope lights
— 24 snowflakes
— Six flowers
It actually doesn’t take that long to install all of those things on the bridge. A crew of five volunteers gets the job done in a couple of days.
What does take time, though, is getting all of the bridge parts out of storage and testing them to make sure they still work. If any part fails, it has to be repaired before it can go on the bridge.
It takes a couple of weeks to complete decorating the bridge.
Dianne Packee, who organizes the Windmont holiday decoration effort, said, “I originally came out here because I wanted to learn how to do the bridge.”
Packee said it took six years for Bob Neirynck, one of the group of volunteers who got the lighting project started back in the 1980s, to get the bridge decorated the way he wanted it.
Since then, of course, a number of decorations have been added to turn the bridge into the display piece it is today.
Visitors can see the bridge from throughout the park.
“When the Windmont Bridge is lit for the Christmas season,” Packee said, “every year you walk through it you feel “the ‘Magical Sense of the Beauty’ it beholds.
“After Santa leaves and it’s not so hectic, Bob and Terry Neirynck used to take their walk around the park to see everything lit up for the first time,” she said. “Now the tradition continues but Dennie and I get to accompany Terry and feel the pride in this beautiful park we have. Thank you, to all the volunteers that make this possible.”
