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Friday, March 29, 2024

Rossville man continues Christmas lights display while recovering from leg injury

Credit: WLFI
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Rossville man continues Christmas lights display while recovering from leg injury
Rossville man continues Christmas lights display while recovering from leg injury

Rossville man continues Christmas lights display while recovering from a leg injury

His recovery.

91-year-old calvin cottrell is known for his home's extravagant christmas lights display.

This year he broke his legs just weeks before he finished putting them up.

Now his family is stepping in to keep the tradition alive.

News 18's micah upshaw shares the story.

Nat: hi grandpa, hope you're getting well, we love you.

D: mom and dad used to go around and look at the christmas lights, displays at different places and they decided that they wanted to start decorating their farm so they started small.

M: one simple decoration that started on the (caught-rule) cottrell family's flag pole has turned to this.

A christmas display with three to four hundred thousand lights.

B: the lights is like everything to him and so he'd already had the stable out and the nativity means so much to the family we went ahead and put the nativity out but other than that, calvin put up all of those lights.

M: cottrell's son david and his daughter in law betty say he spent almost the entire year prepping his home for this year's holiday display.

They say a few eks ago he had been working on his display and fell and broke his legs while his home later that night.

B: you know, you might have expected him to break his legs out there but no, it was in the house.

D: which was fortunate that it happened in the house and not outside where would have been out in the mud or something like that when it happened, but yeah, god was looking out after him.

M: while hundreds have made it a family tradition to view these lights every holiday.

David and betty say it's really (caught-rule) cottrell who gets the most out of this..

D: he just loves the joy that people get out of it.

It just gives him the enthusiasm to continue on and if it wouldn't be for that he might not be here because it keeps him active.

M: although it isn't shining as bright as the former displays, the family is happy he was able to get it close to completion.

D: it's enough that it was worth turning on because he had a lot accomplished and i'm just glad to be able to be apart of it.

M: reporting in rossville, micah upshaw.

News 18.

The lights will be up for display until december 29th.

You can view them anytime beween 6 to 10 p-m.

The location is on our website wlfi.com.

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