Volunteers step up to more than save Aurora's Festival of Lights

More than 31,000 cars drove through Aurora's Festival of Lights display over the holidays, just months after it appeared the annual show would have to be canceled.

In August, the Aurora Noon Rotary Club and Mayor Richard Irvin made a public appeal for volunteers because the organization didn't have enough people to prepare the one-mile drive-through display, which opened the day after Thanksgiving and continued through the day after Christmas.

"A lot of our founding members have retired and moved away," said Linda Kemp, president of the Aurora Rotary Club. "We didn't have the hands on that we had before."

But within two days of Irvin talking about the problem during an August media briefing, 80 people had volunteered to help with the Festival of Lights. By the time the festival wrapped up its 13th season, more than 350 people had volunteered their time to make it happen.

"The volunteers showed up in droves," Irvin said this week. "And the 13th season of the Festival of Lights was not only saved - it was highly successful."

Kemp said the 31,100 vehicles that drove through the display were "over and above anything we could have possibly imagined."

While admission is free, goodwill donations are accepted during the festival.

More than $71,000 was collected, Kemp said. Through those donations, the club will provide grants to local nonprofit organizations.

"So many wonderful things have happened," Kemp said. "We could never have gotten this off the ground" if it wasn't for the volunteers who came forward to help.

Volunteers initially were needed to work on Saturdays in August and September to individually test the thousands of bulbs that light up the exhibits. Then another group was needed to help arrange the displays the week before Thanksgiving and take it down when the festival ended.

"Given the scale, it's a huge undertaking in labor to set it up and take it down," said Byron Saum, who has been volunteering with the festival since it began. "It happens in a short period of time, and it's a lot of physical labor."

Meanwhile, most of the volunteers were needed to greet visitors and collect donations during the festival's run.

"We couldn't believe our eyes when we saw how many people showed up to help us," Saum said.

He said he is looking forward to working with the new volunteers again later this year.

"Instead of Rotary staging something for the community, there's more community participation than there's ever been," Saum said. "That's a good thing."