CONWAY — Christmas isn’t over for four homeowners in a Conway subdivision, but this is the last night to experience their light show.
Angi and Tony Brighter, 1305 Tony Circle in the Catherine Place subdivision, have 40,000 lights set to the beat of Christmas music broadcast on a radio frequency.
They have three neighbors in on the act as well.
The light show, which started the Sunday after Thanksgiving, will be going from 5:30 until 11:30 tonight.
It all started from an e-mail the couple received, Tony said.
“Back in the 2005 time frame, I received an e-mail that was floating around from a gentleman in Utah, and it was a video of his house, and he had had his lights dancing to music, so it fascinated me,” Tony said.
“I’m looking at how to go to the next level,” he said, so he figured out how to do his own display.
“We always had outside lights,” he said, but this was a challenge for the Acxiom employee.
So three years ago, he found a Web site that lists available radio frequencies in the area.
“You tune to that station and make sure nobody is using it, and as long as you don’t go beyond a certain distance, you can use it,” he said.
He has a “box, like a minicomputer” that he uses to program the songs and three neighbors invested in one, too.
It takes 200-300 hours to program each song, he said. “I have to tell every single light what to do.”
The computer in Tony’s home office is the “mastermind,” he said. “Everybody connects to me.”
He started with seven songs, but like the number of lights, that grew.
“Last year, I got it up to 17 with the help of my daughter and son-in-law,” he said.
One neighbor has 7,500 lights as part of the computerized show; one 5,000; and the third one has 2,800 or so.
“He promised me it was going to grow,” Tony said of the neighbor with the fewest lights.
Dr. Hunter Scaife said he has about 7,500 lights.
“[Tony] has that many in one tree,” Scaife said with a laugh.
“This is our first year to do it. We finally just joined. We tried to do it last year, but we couldn’t get the equipment in time.”
Scaife said it has been a good family project.
“My oldest, Mar lee, she really loved it. She helped hand out candy canes with [Tony] many nights,” Scaife said.
Tony said he and his wife buy five cases of 2,400 candy canes to give out, and by Monday they had given almost all of them away.
Scaife said he is “definitely” going to add more lights to his home next year.
The first year of the project, Angi said she told her husband, “You are crazy. Why are we doing this?”
She said people began to ask,“‘Are you taking donations? Are you taking donations?’ And I was like, no, no. So I got in touch with the United Way.” An employee of the United Way put her in touch with Tracy Stocks, president of Make A Child Smile, which provides clothing, school supplies and Christmas presents to needy children in central Arkansas.
Donations were taken last year for the organization, and this year Arkansas Children’s Hospital was added.
To date, $1,500, plus toys and clothing, have been donated to Make A Child Smile and about $1,200 for Arkansas Children’s Hospital, Angi said.
“There are several children who live around Conway that have cancer,” she said.
Even if their immune systems are weakened from chemotherapy, they can sit in a vehicle and enjoy the lights, Angi said.
“They have called us; they have sent cards telling us thank you,” she said.
Angi said Best Buy in Conway gave them a Wii for the children’s hospital toy closet and she used the donated money to buy games and accessories.
“Then there were board games and card games I went and got,” she said.
Tony said he is happy to help worthy causes with the community’s donations.
The candy canes and the light display are “our gift to the community,” Tony said.
“We do this for a reason - to give people things to do as a family and something to do that doesn’t cost anything.
“When I see children smile and parents and even teenagers who tell us, ‘It gave us something to do,’ that’s the best reward in the world,” Tony added.
- tkeith@ arkansasonline.com
River Valley Ozark, Pages 61 on 12/31/2009