By Christine Schaefer | Daily Reporter
GREENFIELD –- The handful of Greenfield Christian Church parishioners spent an hour or two setting up more than 100 luminaries along the front of the church and down the sidewalk.
The group was participating in “Let There Be Light,” an event organized by the Greenfield Community initiative, to honor medical personnel, first-responders and others on the front lines against COVID-19. The night-time candle lighting followed a national movement of communities across the country that have recognized their own first-responders with similar events.
When finished, Gary and Phyllis Wasson, Mary Foreman, Nancy Alldredge and Sharon Feister and their friends –- all in masks — settled down in lawn chairs and with blankets against the breeze to enjoy each other’s company and watch the cars go by.
“We’re not worshiping yet,” Feister said, acknowledging the governor’s stay-at-home order during the pandemic, “and this is the first chance we’ve had to see each other in weeks even with a mask.”
Feister had seen a notice in the Daily Reporter about the Wednesday night event and urged the church to participate. “Let There Be Light” was organized by Greenfield Community, a collaboration among the city of Greenfield, Greenfield-Central schools, Hancock Health and NineStar Connect to market the community on social media. Under the hashtag #greenfieldcares, the group’s Facebook page features a weekly schedule of posts and ideas for themed days such as Art in the Window Monday, Chalk Your Walk Tuesday and Spread Kindness Saturday.
The sidewalks around Greenfield Christian Church were one of many downtown areas adorned with lanterns. The post office, the courthouse, the Memorial Building, the police station, city hall, the 911 center and Hancock Regional Hospital were all lit up with a variety of milk jugs and sand-filled paper bags and candles.
Delaney Morelock, a teacher at the Bradley Preschool, found herself organizing the luminaria around Hancock Regional Hospital after she donated milk jugs for the cause.
“We made an igloo at the preschool and had about 400 jugs left over,” Morelock said. “Instead of just recycling them, we’re donating them and then recycling them.”
Morelock called in her cousin, Jamie Deer, who happens to own a drone he uses for photography. Deer took a number of aerial photographs of the luminaries around Hancock Regional Hospital.
Sarah Schmitt and her son Cooper, 13, drove through the community after dark looking at the lights. Schmitt, whose husband Louis is a nurse at Community North Hospital, had commented on some of the things people had done to show their appreciation.
When son Cooper’s children’s theater group KidsPlay decided to be a part of “Let There Be Light,” Cooper pitched in to support his group’s participation with theater-themed lanterns.
“We’ve basically been at our house since March 12,” Schmitt said, “and this seemed like a great reason to get out and see the town again. The first lights we came to were at the hospital, and I actually teared up a little. It’s the least we could do to let the front-line workers know that their sacrifices and hard work have not gone unnoticed.”
