The holidays are a wonderful time of year not just for the pretty lights and good food, but because it’s a time of year that brings out the best in people. You can often hear heartwarming stories of strangers helping strangers in need out of the goodness of their heart, and it always hits the feels.
This story is no exception, and it reminds us that Christmas is a time of giving, and we should all strive to make it a year-round habit.
For Dale Marks, every holiday season was a chance to raise money and bring awareness to the Food Bank of Iowa by putting up a huge Christmas lights display at his house in Des Moines, Iowa. His displays have become an annual tradition in his neighborhood. The display was so popular that for years people were known to turn out in droves just to get a glimpse of his elaborate displays.
It was this display that got Dale thinking that he could use it to make a difference, and so each year, he and his family would put their out bins in their driveway so that visitors could donate money or food in order to give to the Food Bank of Iowa. And his actions were quite successful.
In fact, according to KCCI Des Moines, regarding last year’s lights display, Dale happily announced, “We made over 28,000 meals in cash for the food bank last year, and that’s just an amazing feat.”
Unfortunately, this year Dale was too weak to get the light display up this year. He actually went through a rough patch, having survived both a heart attack and two strokes! Given all he went through health-wise, he wasn’t feeling strong enough to put up his usual holiday displays on his own. It was looking like he was going to have to give the lights a miss. However, a stranger stepped in to save the holiday tradition.
Bob Coffey was the Good Samaritan who stepped in when Dale needed a helping hand. He had first heard about Dale’s predicament while speaking with a friend. Bob, who owns a local construction company, called Bob the Builder LLC, immediately wanted to help out Dale. Even though the two men had never met, Bob still gathered a group of volunteers and then showed up at Dale’s house – ready to install thousands of lights.
Bob and his volunteers spent plenty of hours stringing up lights and putting out decorations in order to get the Marks’ family home Christmas ready. Bob has already estimated that it easily could’ve been at least 10,000 lights. There were so many lights, that Bob joked the moment he plugged in the lights he felt like Clark Griswold in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.
Regarding the experience – particularly seeing how happy both Dale and his wife were – Bob said to West Virginia’s News, “The memory of that afternoon will last a lifetime. When we got done, I just told him to have a great night and to take care of himself. And he cried. I cried … It was pretty awesome.”
And that makes us so happy to hear. We wish Dale and his family a very Merry Christmas!