Myers Park neighbors use their decorations for good

Each December, Charlotteans drive through neighborhoods to view awe-inspiring holiday light displays.

Hillside Avenue, near Myers Park Country Club, has joined the list of must-sees with hundreds of whimsical, floating balls of light nestled in the trees along the street.

And for the third year in a row, Hillside residents have used their lights to collect food and cash donations for Loaves & Fishes, a nonprofit food bank in Charlotte.

The lighted balls are made out of chicken wire and string lights, and each year neighbors construct them together a few days before Thanksgiving, said Patty Sellers, whose family has lived on Hillside for two years.

Last year they hung 485 lighted balls down the street, according to the event’s Facebook page. The lights don’t have an official end date, but will probably come down in early January before schools reopen, Sellers said.

The decorating tradition is said to have originated 18 years ago when Greensboro residents Jonathan and Anne Smith created the first lighted ball, and it spread to Charlotte through relatives.

“It’s like living in Whoville,” Sellers said. “It makes December bright and cheery.”

The food collection began in 2012, when 16-year-old Mason Schmitt merged the decorating with charity for her Girl Scout Gold Award project. She told the Observer that November that she hoped the project had a future.

And it has – even as Schmitt left for college, Hillside residents continue the collections, still led by the Schmitt family. A tent and food collection barrels are on the street to drop off donations.

Each year, they have collected about 20,000 pounds of food, Schmitt said.

“It’s really exploded in the last couple years,” said Charles Snover, who lives on Hillside. “Other streets in the neighborhood have started doing (the balls).”

Snover, a senior at Myers Park High School, helped Schmitt with the food collection at the start and now hangs many of the balls for neighbors.

Snover uses a baseball to cast the lighted balls high over the tree branches. Some neighbors use other tools, such as fishing poles and potato guns, to hang their lights, Sellers said.

Families volunteer to carol and sell hot chocolate to passersby on certain nights, though they cut down on how many this year because the traffic was getting bad, Sellers said.

“It gets annoying around Christmas because there’s so much traffic and it’s hard to back out of the driveway,” Snover said. “But it looks really cool.”

Following the trend set by Schmitt and Snover, teens and kids in the neighborhood play a large part in the decorating and volunteering.

Often, children run the collection and hot chocolate tent with their parents. The older kids help out with the decorating, like Snover. And Sellers said her daughter helps turn lights on and off for neighbors who are out of town.

This year, the food drive had a direct impact, shared on the Facebook page the afternoon of Christmas Eve.

“A few minutes ago, a family knocked on our door and asked us if we were giving away the food outside,” the post reads. “The father explained he was unemployed and they didn’t have any food for Christmas.

“We told them to take what they needed! Justification for the cause!”

Staff researcher Maria David contributed.

This story was originally published December 24, 2014 at 3:44 PM with the headline "Myers Park neighbors use their decorations for good."