Community groups forming initiative to help children in Elyria’s Ward 5

Middle school students in Elyria’s 5th Ward will now have all the resources they need to thrive through United Way of Greater Lorain County’s new community collaborative.

That was the message delivered Dec. 19 as multiple agencies from across the county gathered at the Boys and Girls Club Elyria Community Center for a press conference to announce the YES Zone.

The YES (Youth Empowerment Services) Zone is made up of a 30-block radius which starts at South Maple Street and wraps around to the neighborhoods surrounding Franklin School, explained Ray Armstrong, director of the Elyria Boys & Girls Club.

The overall project calls on nine agencies to unite forces and services for the sole purpose of enhancing and enriching the lives of south Elyria children in fifth through eighth grades while preparing them for the future, said United Way of Greater Lorain County Executive Director William Harper.

“This neighborhood has had its challenges but it can rise up again,” Harper said. “The challenge is to come together with a common agenda, work together and support one another as we work towards offering youth in south Elyria wrap-around services both in and out of the classroom.”

According to Ryan Aroney, United Way’s marketing and development director, the collaborative will provide mentoring services, target literacy programming, an in-school health curriculum and offer middle school students educational services to enhance literacy and math skills and more.

“We’re looking to make a real impact in these children’s lives,” Aroney said.

Micklos started helping decorate his house when he was 13 years old, and now with a family of his own, it is something that he hopes his two sons will take up.

The family’s “winter wonderland,” as the lights say in their front yard, started off with traditional incandescent bulbs but recently made the switch over to the more energy-saving and environmentally friendly LEDs.

“We had about 5,000 lights and our electric bill was around $800 for the six weeks we had everything up,” he said. “Now that we are using all LED bulbs the bill runs around $350 for about 50,000 lights.”

Micklos said the center point of his Christmas display is a movie projector that broadcasts a 70-minute film of the Grinch stealing presents from a tree. The projector creates a back image that is shown on a transparent piece of movie screen fabric.

On Christmas Eve, the Grinch is replaced with Santa Claus and from the outside of the house the looped film looks very realistic, he said.

“We do this ever year because it brings joy to a lot of people,” Micklos said.

Lorain resident Mike Post, 4570 Broadway Ave., has taken the opposite approach by actually reducing the number of lights that he uses. Instead, he relies on landscaping lights and figurines to create his holiday home.

“We have toy soldiers as tall as the house and three dozen figures that are out on the lawn,” Post said.

At 58 years old, Post said he started using the landscaping lights to make things easier and they have worked out well. The lights can be green and red and still light up the whole house, he said.

Post said he has been decorating his home for the past 20 years and has the process down to a science.

“Without lighting the house I have cut down about 15 hours of the work and only spend about 25 hours total now,” he said.

The figurines are the focal point of the display, Post said, and are what got him involved in decorating for the holidays in the first place.

“The idea started when I was checking out of a store and saw a light-up Winnie the Pooh. Pooh was something my daughter loved but it would have looked odd to just have that in the middle of the yard so I bought some other figures to go with it,” he recalled.

“My grandkids keep me doing it now and so do the neighbors. They would probably think I died if I didn’t do it, Post said with a laugh.