WS Chronicle

By Felecia Piggott-Long

While driving home after church services on Sunday, Nov. 19, I had to pause as I drove up the hill toward Shady Mount Avenue. Some cars had stopped near the top of the hill and a line was forming. When I reached the top of the hill, I saw the spectacle that had attracted so much attention from the passersby. The yard surrounding a cozy cottage on the corner of Shady Mount was decorated with red, white, green, and gold trimmings representing the holiday season.

When I knocked on the door, the members of the Kelly family – Johanna and Adam Kelly and their daughter Isabella and their son Jordan who had decorated their yard for the holiday season –  came out to greet me. Together we counted numerous items in the yard that were so festive. There were 18 representations of Santa Claus, not only as a 14-ft. jolly old elf, but as an inflated alligator, a unicorn, a chimney climber, a penguin, a dachshund, a snowman, a gingerbread man, and so many other images. 

They had inflated 11 snowmen, planted 35 candy canes, inflated a merry-go-round North Pole, and eight reindeer. They even inflated a 14-foot Clydesdale horse with a wreath around his neck.

Johanna and Adam give honor to her deceased father, Joseph Winters, and his deceased grandmother, Marion Cook, each year with their decorations. 

“My children always called their grandmother Grandma Goose, and she loved Christmas and the holiday season. My father also went all out for the holiday season,” said Johanna Kelly. “We do it for the children around the neighborhood. We want to make them feel good about the approaching holiday. We do this every year, but this is the biggest show we have put on yet.”

“My father would dress up like Santa Claus every year, so this year we ordered some inflatable items online that would help remind us of my Dad and my husband’s grandmother,” Johanna Kelly said.

“I was adopted as an only child, but Grandma Goose always brought all the adopted nieces and nephews together during the Christmas holidays. I never felt left out,” said Adam Kelly.

“We want the children in our home and those in the community to get the message that none of us should be left out. We had to call the police last week as we were putting the decorations out,” said Kelly. “Some teens were trying to let the air out of the characters. Christmas is our favorite holiday, and we want children and the young at heart to get the message.”