Let There Be Light
Christmas Display Rivalry, 12 Years Strong, Is Both Bond and Balm

By William Wan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 22, 2007

For more than a year, the lights sat in Richard Diller's garage, tens of thousands of bulbs and strands gone dark on his dusty shelves. And all that time, his neighbor Steve Andrews had followed suit, keeping his own lights stowed away.

But no one on Severn Avenue could forget about the war of lights that raged for years on their block -- epic battles between Richard and Steve every December that bathed the street in bright, almost psychedelic bursts of color.

People in the small corner of Severna Park in Anne Arundel County would watch from their porches as the two men, equally burly and bullheaded, strove to outdo each other. As they worked atop their ladders, a flurry of insults and taunts would fly across the few feet of grass separating their homes. Down below, their long-suffering wives would simply shake their heads.

Then last year, it all came to a sudden end. On Thanksgiving, when the lights battle usually began, Richard's wife, Eileen, passed away in her sleep.

Suddenly, Christmas lights were the last thing on anyone's mind. In the weeks that followed, all the caustic banter, the gaudy props and bright strings, even Christmas itself, seemed wrong somehow -- too cheery, too trivial.

For the first time in 12 years, the two houses passed Christmas in darkness.

* * *

Last month, as another Thanksgiving came and went, Steve's house remained dark. By this time, he and Richard normally would have started their battle, but neither brought it up. Instead, they sat on Richard's porch after work, shooting the breeze and trading halfhearted digs. Steve thought about broaching the subject and coaxing his neighbor to put up a few strands. Maybe the colored bulbs would distract him from his empty house.

So a few weeks ago, Steve, 45, mentioned some lights he had spotted up the street.

In the heyday of their battles, few others on the block had bothered to decorate their homes. It would have been like turning on a flashlight in broad daylight -- kind of pointless. But this year, a few lights had begun popping up, as if to fill the darkness. One couple a few doors down even wrapped a tree in a few thousand bulbs, the way Steve used to do.

Let's go check it out, he told Richard, 49.

They stood for a while in front of the couple's house.

"What do you think?" Steve finally asked Richard. "You want to put up a few?"

Richard mulled it over. Not yet. Too soon, he replied.

Okay, Steve said. "I won't throw them up until you throw some up."

It's how their war has always worked. It's how the whole thing started.

The Christmas of 1995, after he and Eileen moved to the neighborhood, Richard had made it a point to check out the competition next door. He had come armed with boxes of bulbs from their old townhouse in Glen Burnie.

Richard was a man who believed in doing things all the way or not at all. After a decade in construction, he had built an athletic field irrigation company from scratch.

So that first Christmas in Severna Park, when Richard looked next door and saw three paltry strands strewn along his neighbor's bushes, he couldn't help chuckling. The poor sucker wouldn't know what hit him, he thought.

What Richard didn't count on was Steve, a professional carpenter equally skilled with a toolbox, and just as stubborn when it came to competition.

Year after year, the two men slathered on the lights, trying to gain the upper hand.

Steve would bring home a seven-foot nutcracker, only to watch Richard retaliate with a life-size Santa and reindeer. Then, a few days later, Richard would come home to find the lights on his Santa flashing inexplicably. It would take him hours to find the flasher bulb that had been planted amid his tangled strands.

The men tried to enlist their children as spies, but the kids proved a bit more mature than their fathers.

Both men blew their fuses so many times they ended up installing extra circuit breakers and outlets. Electrical limitations one year forced Richard to pick between plugging in his ailing father's oxygen machine or his lights. The oxygen ultimately won, but Richard devised a way to work around his father's schedule and eke out 90 minutes a night for lights.

The rivalry reached fever pitch in 2001 with Steve's magnum opus: an 8-by-16-foot American flag.

The heat from the glowing monstrosity melted all snow within two feet. The sheer number of bulbs, 6,000 in all, required 12 extension cords, six outlets and a 30-amp circuit breaker.

Richard countered with a 28-foot Christmas tree in lights nailed to the side of his house. But even then, Steve's flag won the day.

* * *

As years passed, they began calling themselves illumination artists. Each emerged with a style of his own.

Steve was all about raw power and bright lights. Richard was more artistic. He color-coordinated his bulbs and pruned his holly trees. Steve put it this way: "He's a little more namby-pamby, Martha Stewart-y about it all."

Part of that had to do with Richard's spouse. Although each wife disliked her husband's obsession, Eileen tended to be a little less vocal when it was tastefully done.

"She wouldn't touch a light bulb if her life depended on it," Richard said, "But underneath it all, I think she loved it. Both our wives did."

That's what made it so hard this year, he said. It was just over a year ago -- as Christmas and another battle of lights drew near -- that things fell apart.

It happened so suddenly. For several months, Eileen, 51, had been feeling dizzy. After administering a battery of tests, her doctors suspected a minor ear infection. She took a few months off work and seemed to improve.

Then came Thanksgiving, when a brain aneurysm claimed her life.

Steve was the first person to arrive at the house after the ambulance. The cops told him to stay with Richard, to keep him calm. It was Steve who called the funeral home and watched as Richard broke the news to his daughter in New Jersey.

In the months that followed, the two men talked, but rarely about lights or pranks. So it was with some delicacy nearly three weeks ago that Steve brought up the lights.

Not yet, Richard had said.

Out of respect, Steve agreed . . . only to come home a few days later to find the entire front of Richard's house decked in some 4,000 lights.

"I started cursing," Steve said. "You probably can't print what I said, but basically I was like, 'What the heck, dude? You said nothing this year.' "

Richard just gave him a sly smile and a laugh, the way he used to so often in the old days.

"I changed my mind. Tough break, man," he said. "Better get moving if you want to catch up."

A few days later, out of earshot of Steve, he explained his decision this way: "I started sorting through the boxes, and one strand led to 30, which led to 50. . . . Look, it comes down to this: The lights bring a little flash to your life, and one thing I've learned is that you get your kicks out of life where you can."

* * *

By last week, the war was once more in full swing. But with little time and ammunition left, it was looking dire for Steve, who never really caught up after Richard's surging lead.

Finally, on Wednesday, he walked over to Richard's garage and admitted defeat.

"I'm going to wait until next year to stomp and crush your dreams," Steve said.

"Look, the man just lost and already he's talking up a storm," Richard shot back.

"I'm going to have so many lights next year, people will be tanning in my driveway," Steve said.

"Talk is cheap. Light speaks wonders."

Christmas -- with all its lights, insults and rivalry -- had returned to Severn Avenue.

Staff researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.