The McDonald woman started setting up her holiday displays almost 20 years ago.

By SHERRI L. SHAULIS
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
EANNE WALLS CAN'T HELP BUT spread holiday cheer.
In fact, it's spreading itself all over her two-bedroom apartment.
Just walking past her door at the Woodland Park Retirement Center on Ohio Avenue is enough to have you singing Christmas carols. Lights, pine roping and red ribbon frame the doorway, while a motion sensor in a 2-foot snowman fills the hallway with music. Holiday-themed magnets are affixed to every free space of the door itself.
But once that door opens, a veritable winter wonderland is waiting just inside.
Fiber optics illuminate Santas and snowmen. Snow globes and statues produce holiday music. Trees of all sizes fill table and shelf space. Dolls, holiday villages and poinsettias are nestled in cotton snow. Everywhere you look, there's something Christmas.
"I don't know how I got started, really," the 77-year-old says. "I just started going, going and going, and I got more and more and more."
Walls says she does know everything got started on a grand scale almost 20 years ago, a few years after her husband's death and once she moved into Central Park Apartments, a retirement center in Niles. A friend made her several pieces, and she created some ceramic trees and other decorations on her own. In the ensuing years, her children -- daughter Linda and her husband, John, of McDonald; son Kenny of McDonald and daughter Kathy of Austintown -- have added to her collection. Now, she also has six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren to help with the tradition.
Beauty and joy
Walls gets animated when she talks of how her youngest great-grandchild -- who are 2 and 3 -- came to visit recently.
"Their eyes just got so big, and they said, 'Grandma! You have a lot of Christmas stuff!'" she said.
Each year, about a week before Thanksgiving, she starts pulling out the boxes, unwrapping items and finding a space -- any space -- for it. It can take as long as four weeks to get everything out and on display.
She laughs when people ask where all the items remain throughout the rest of the year.
"People always ask that question," she said. "You've got to be a really good packer."
Despite being considered legally blind, Walls loves her decorations and the joy they bring to her family and friends. Her passion has grown to where she decorates for other holidays -- hearts for Valentine's Day; shamrocks for St. Patrick's Day; and flags for Memorial Day, the Fourth of July and Veterans Day. But none has come close to the extent she decks the halls for Christmas, except maybe Easter, she says.
In the spirit
She admits she wasn't always so into decorating.
"There were seven of us growing up, and we never had anything like this," she said. "There was never anything besides a little tree. And even when my kids were little, we didn't have a lot of money. But we always put up a little tree and a few trimmings."
Walls says she really got into the spirit once her eyesight started to go in 1977. She started thinking she wanted to celebrate a big Christmas, and things got started a few years after that.
Just a few years ago, though, Walls went through a tough illness and started to give away and sell off many of her decorations. It's a move she regrets some because many items were one-of-a-kind or gifts from friends.
"I could just kick myself about that sometimes," she says.
After she began to recover, she started up with the decorations again.
She admits she can't see all of the small ornaments on trees or some of the smaller decorative items, but she loves seeing the lights and hearing the music.
"I just love it," she says.
slshaulis@vindy.com