John Cunningham and Rob Sall are no strangers to decorating public areas in their section of south Forest Park– but their latest project blew everything out of the water.
It is thanks to their vision that the majority of the trees along the section of Beloit Avenue between Harrison Street and Roosevelt Road are wrapped with winter holiday lights (not the Christmas lights – they wanted to be clear that the display is completely nondenominational). They decorated the trees in front of their house on the 1100 block of Beloit Avenue last year, liked how it turned out and decided they wanted to “make it a bigger thing” in 2023.
Back in the early fall, the couple reached out to their neighbors to see if there was any interest and tried to gauge how many neighbors would participate. The response was overwhelmingly positive, with neighbors donating money to help buy the lights and volunteering their time to hang the lights up. Cummingham and Sall said that they saw many neighbors on the nearby streets follow their lead, and they hope to make the display even bigger next year.
For the past few years, the couple have been decorating planters at several major intersections in south Forest Park. They were the ones who did the Super Mario Brothers themed displays near Ed’s Way grocery store earlier this year, and put up the “Candyland” display at all four corners of the same intersection.
Sall said that, after their original outreach got a positive response, they put together another flier explaining the logistics of actually putting the lights up. They decided that the lights would be LED lights because they would be more energy efficient. The power cords couldn’t run across the sidewalk to avoid a tripping hazard.
There have been cases where a house wanted to participate but had reservations about plugging the lights into their own power supply, what with electric bills already spiking during winter. In situations like this, they were sometimes able to find a neighbor next door who was willing to share their power supply.
There have also been cases where the neighbors didn’t have any trees on their property but still wanted to get involved – so they donated money to help Cunningham and Sall buy the lights.
On the second weekend of November, the couple and “maybe a dozen” volunteers went to work putting the lights up.
“We had four work sessions that weekend – one in the morning, one in afternoon both Saturday and Sunday,” Cuningham said. “We had ladders, and we just classically moved from the south [end of] Beloit to the north and worked up street through the weekend.”
Sall estimates that about 80% of the trees “give or take” got wrapped, mentioning that the 900 block “wasn’t well lit.” It should be noted that the 952 Beloit Avenue building, which houses Field-Stevenson elementary school and Forest Park Middle School, takes up a decent portion of the west side of the street on that block. Sall said that he was under impression that Forest Park School District 91 was going to put up its own display.
Jennifer Wolfe, a former Forest Park Review contributing photographer, lives on the 900 block of Beloit Avenue. She said that she’s already been impressed with the work Sall and Cunningham put into the planters, but said she feels that they’ve really outdone themselves this time.
“There’s a lot of people who do great things in the city, and these guys go well beyond what anyone else has done,” Wolfe said.
While she didn’t have a large tree to wrap the lights around, Lights on Beloit inspired her to get into the holiday spirit and decorate her own house.
“I think their enthusiasm, it translates, it’s like blowing fairy dust in people’s eyes,” Wolfe said. “It makes you happy there’s a holiday there.”
During the Nov. 27 Forest Park Village Council meeting, commissioner Ryan Nero said that he was impressed by how the community came together to light up Beloit Avenue.
“All it takes is a little spark,” he said.
Sall said that the response from outside the block has been “amazing.”
“We had people from almost every other block asking us – can we do mine?” he said, specifically mentioning people living on Elgin, Lathrop and Dunlop avenues as examples.
Cunningham said that what he liked most about the Lights on Beloit was that it allowed neighbors who may have only met in passing to get to know each other.
“Overall, I think it was just a good community-building project where we did a day where people got to meet each other and talk to each other, and discover some of their neighbors down the street,” he said.
Sall said that they were very deliberate about those lights not being Christmas lights, because they wanted to speak to the broader importance of shining the light in the darkness.
“We basically referred to it as winter lights, sort of a bright point in the long, dreary, dark days of winter,” he said. “We just hope that it would put a smile on people’s faces and give a glimmer of hope.”