<img src="http://www.joplinglobeonline.com/images/zope/extra.gif" border=0>Popular Kansas display making last appearance<font color="#ff0000"> w/ Christmas lights slide show</font>

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December 24, 2007

Anonymous The Joplin Globe Mon Dec 24, 2007, 09:32 PM CST

By Melissa Dunson

mdunson@joplinglobe.com

BAXTER SPRINGS, Kan. — When Gladys Murray was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer in April, her one request was that her three new great-grandchildren get the chance to see the Christmas light display she had spent 40 years building.

Murray died in June, but her family members did not forget their promise. Sons, daughters and grandchildren came together to put up tens of thousands of lights that simultaneously tell both the Christmas story and the Murray family history — one last time.

“(Gladys) was the matriarch. She always wanted to keep the family close,” said Threasa Lewis, Murray’s granddaughter. “She always told us as long as she was alive, there would always be a Santa Claus, that we would always have a holiday.”

The display started with a traditional Nativity scene in 1968, when Murray and her husband, John, moved to the corner of U.S. Highway 166 and Kansas Highway 26. Every year, Lewis said, her grandmother’s Christmas request was for more light displays. Anything she wanted, her husband found or built for her, Lewis said.

The display mingles Santa, reindeer and elves working at the North Pole with Mary, Joseph and the infant Jesus.

The family is tightknit, Lewis said. She, her mother, and several aunts and uncles live on property around the Murrays’ now empty home. It was one of the things Gladys Murray loved most about her family.

As the family’s history changed over the years, so did the light display.

When John Murray died just before Christmas in 1992, Gladys Murray changed the colored lights to blue. She wanted everyone who visited what she called her “Christmas Corner” to know she was having a blue Christmas without her sweetheart. She also put up a sign dedicating the display to the memory of the man with whom she lived and worked for decades.

The couple had owned and operated John J. Murray and Sons Wrecking for years. Lewis called her grandparents’ bond “very strong” and said their personalities complemented each other.

“My grandpa was a talker and very outgoing; he could sell ice to an Eskimo,” she said. “And my grandma, she was quieter but definitely the force inside the house holding the family together.”

Family displays

Other family members made their way into the display as well.

In 1995, Gladys Murray lost her daughter Marquetta Murray to cancer. In her honor, a blue angel hovers over Christmas Corner.

In 1996, Gladys Murray’s grandson John Sears was killed in a car wreck. In his memory, a replica of his Trans Am is outlined in blue lights among Santa and his reindeer.

Last year, Gladys Murray asked her children to build a sled scene with four horses. Lewis said it represented her grandmother’s childhood in Nebraska.

“I think she knew last year that it was her last Christmas,” Lewis said. “She bought a lot of keepsake gifts for everyone. All of her daughters got Thomas Kinkade winter boxes. The grandsons got different knife sets, and the granddaughters got porcelain dolls.”

Lewis said her family will get together once again this year in her grandmother’s empty house, in the glow of her light display, to share Christmas traditions.

“We’re still going to have Christmas there, but it won’t be the same,” she said.

Over the years, the display touched many people who were not members of the family. Lewis said there have always been those who slowed down to look at the lights, but over the years, many made it an annual tradition to bring their families to see the lights.

Those families will have to find somewhere else to see Christmas lights next year. Lewis said the display is large enough to make maintaining it difficult, and several of her family members have health problems that hamper their everyday abilities.

“She made us promise we’d put them up one last time, and this will be the last time,” Lewis said.

Ice storm

This month’s ice storm darkened Christmas Corner for a few days, but the display survived.

“Some scenery got damaged during the storm, but Joseph, Mary and the baby are OK,” Threasa Lewis said. “We only lost two camels and a donkey.”