For Frank: A holiday display you could see from orbit

LACONIA — Frank Mills started building Christmas light displays about 20 years ago as a way to honor his family members. This holiday season, the first since his death, his loved ones returned the favor by lighting up his home as never before — and earning the property its fourth consecutive award from Celebrate Laconia’s holiday light competition, according to his widow, Marie.

The Mills home, located on Country Club Road, has been cornering the competition for the Light Up Laconia “Clark Griswold” category, the one reserved for creativity, design and use of space, and “the one you can see from outer space,” according to Celebrate Laconia’s website. The Mills property would likely bring a twinkle to an astronaut’s eye, as the displays cover every foot of the 2-acre property.

Just how much holiday display is packed onto the lawn? Even the people who set it up just laughed at the question, because there were too many strings of lights to count. When carefully stored in bins, the displays fill an attic and a detached garage. Marie estimated that there are at least 50 extension cords to power them all, and she knows there are 12 timers set up, because they need to be reset after every rainfall. That’s on top of the near-constant replacing of bulbs, and the fixing of installations after wind damage.

“It’s a full-time job for me, once everything’s up,” she said.

Late bloomer

Frank, who was 75 when he died from cancer on Aug. 14, 2022, left the decorating up to Marie for the early years of their marriage. She fills the interior of the home with creches and miniature villages in time for Advent, and she was also the one who would decorate the front of the house each year, Marie said. The most that Frank would do was string the lights around their Christmas tree.

Marie is a Laconia girl, a product of the Gilbert and Morin families. After college, she got a job working for the Central Intelligence Agency in Washington, D.C. It was there that the two met, while he was serving in the U.S. Marine Corps. Marie and a friend needed a ride home from the airport, and Frank was the ride who showed up. Later, when she and her roommate were moving to a different apartment, Frank also appeared to help.

He came from a small family in Ohio, and Marie said his younger years weren’t particularly happy. He was a quiet, mild-mannered person who worked hard and had hands that could speak to machines. He disliked crowds but, for some reason, he fell right in with her large extended family in New Hampshire.

Settling in Laconia, Frank went into business, opening a gas station on Union Avenue and running three lunch trucks. He later sold those businesses and worked as a machinist. In her professional years, Marie worked for the Community College System of New Hampshire.

The Mills had two daughters, Janel and Karen, but it was when the grandchildren arrived, Marie said, that Frank started turning his talents to Christmas decorations.

First, Frank made large displays with the initials of his grandchildren. Then, once their interests appeared, he built figures that commemorated their personalities. Frank liked sports, so he built a hockey player, tennis player and a skier to show his fandom of his grandkids. Then the mothers of the grandchildren complained, so he built a golfer and weight lifter to represent his daughters.

That ball started rolling around the turn of the millennium, daughter Karen Taylor said. Marie said it started to pick up speed once he noticed appreciation from those outside of his family as well as within.

“He just loved people to see what he had,” Marie said. “In the summertime, people would stop and thank us for our Christmas lights.”

The lights became a central part of the family’s traditions. Frank would get as much set up as possible by late November, then would enlist the labors of all who visited for Thanksgiving to get the rest set up. After dinner that night, they would kick off the Christmas season by lighting the displays for the first time.

The grand finale

Karen said that her father had a penchant for drama with his new creations. He’d design and build them in his workshop, hidden from view, until they were ready for the next lighting season. Then he would set them up and illuminate them for the first time, with the honoree in the audience.

“You wouldn’t see it until it was all done,” Karen said. “It was kind of cute.”

“My dad was great. He really loved us all. He loved his grandchildren, that’s why he focused on making a figure for them,” she added.

Once he had tributes for each of his dearest — Marie’s is a display in the shape of a martini glass — he began to expand his imagination, repurposing things like tomato cages and turning them upside down and stringing them with lights so they looked like a Christmas tree.

A few years ago, his health started to fail. The family learned that Frank that he had a rare form of cancer, which Marie strongly suspects was caused by exposure to chemicals while he was serving in Vietnam.

“For years, he fought it,” Marie said. By the Christmas of 2021, the disease had taken much from Frank. The light display took on a new significance for him.

“He loved to just sit and look at the lights,” Karen said. “Last Christmas, he wasn’t real well. He was pretty sick. You’d see him sitting in the kitchen and looking at the lights.”

By mid-summer, it was clear to the family that their father, who had given so much Christmas joy to so many, wouldn’t likely see another December. And that was a point of discussion for the family, Karen said.

“We promised him, when he was sick, that if he wasn’t here this Christmas, we’d have every string out,” Karen said.

The family found out what that promise really meant after he passed. Frank was known for cleaning out big box stores during their post-Christmas sales, and he bought more than they had bargained for, she said. Dozens more.

“We found quite a few more boxes stashed in his garage.”

It took a team of 11 people, working whenever they had spare time, about six weeks to get all of the regular displays set up, plus all of those bonus strings Frank had squirreled away. Karen said the experience gave her a new appreciation for her father’s work ethic, and for his patience in dealing with unreliable electronics.

Even after it was all set up, with a figure for each daughter, grandchild, and for Marie, there was still something missing.

“My dad never made himself a figure,” Karen said. So, she and her son Cameron constructed one showing — what else? — a man stringing lights on a tree.

It was emotional for the family, Karen said.

“He knew how much we enjoyed his lights. And we knew how much they meant to him.”

It was the biggest display ever for the Mills family, and it will be the last. Marie said that she will be looking to divest herself of much of the collection, passing displays off to family and friends, with the intention to keep just a portion for herself.

“It’s time to downsize, it’s time to make a change,” she said. Marie will continue to decorate, but will stick to just the front of the house in future years.

On Monday night, she was expecting her two daughters to return home to light up the huge display together, and together, turn it off again. One flash of love, bright enough to be seen from space.

Frank would have been pleased by the display, Marie said. “He would be very proud.”