The Festival of Angels is a staple in the winter time in Ponca City and has been since 1996. Many citizens of Ponca City and the surrounding communities share a deeprooted love for the festival. What most don’t realize is the work and energy it takes to continue to offer this to the community.

The Festival of Angels has 10 to 12 volunteers throughout the year to complete the entirety of the festival. From Thanksgiving Eve until the end of December, the people of Ponca City and the surrounding communities are given the ability to experience the magic behind the Festival of Angels. Whether you are walking through the beautiful Cann Memorial Gardens, or driving through the historic Lake Ponca Park, during the winter months, the hard work and dedication of the Festival of Angels volunteers shines through.

You would think that as a winter show, the Festival of Angels and its volunteers would be solely focused and in operation during their open season, which couldn’t be further from the truth. Beginning in March or April, the dedicated volunteers of the Festival of Angels begin their work to repair or make new displays for the light show. The displays often have lights burn out or get damaged during the season and are repaired on the spot to keep the light show up to standard. During March and April, the volunteers have the opportunity to make more in-depth repairs to them, any necessary upgrades, and new displays are made during this time as well. For example, the volunteers made a new addition to their display family in recent years when they looked at their chimney display and felt that it looked a little bare. After creating some stockings to be hung, they decided to make a lighted elf on the shelf to match. They make these displays by projecting images onto the wall, tracing it onto craft paper, then bending a 1/4 inch rod that they weld together, and finally placing rope lights on it. Volunteers try to add new displays every year.

After all of the lights are made and repaired, in April and May, they begin to create a map for the displays to be placed. This can tend to take quite some time. With around 400 displays, it is important that they change the locations of displays to keep the show interesting. This past year, their biggest challenge pertaining to the locations was the gingerbread factory. Because the Lake Ponca Park recently added new bathrooms to the park, the normal location for the gingerbread factory had to be changed. It was extremely difficult to find places that all of the gingerbread men and factory fit in the park, but the volunteers pulled it off.

In October, they begin to ready the park for the holiday season. The 10 to 12 volunteers begin to get everything ready to take out of storage and load onto the trailers. During this time, the Ponca City Parks and Recreation donates the time of 8 to 10 workers and their equipment for two days to help the volunteers place displays and help set up the heavier displays, such as the large lighted arches.

As they begin to load the displays, the volunteers have the finalized maps made and copied so that one volunteer can be on the trailer and direct the Parks and Rec workers to the locations that the displays will be set up. The map is extremely important during this process. Because the displays are so heavy and difficult to move, they don’t want to have to move them again. It is also necessary for the volunteers to be with the Parks and Rec department because the displays are in pieces and unless you have experience with them, it can be difficult to tell what pieces belong together.

When it comes to set up, the magic behind the light show is all about placement. Something that many don’t often think about when driving through the festival is the work and thought that goes into their viewing experience.

“It is so important when you set them up, that you get the right angle. When you are down there working, you think that it looks okay and that you can see it from the road, but then you go back up to the road and it looks completely different,” says Elaine McDonald, Festival of Angels’ treasurer.

If a display is even slightly off, it changes the perspective of the entire experience. On top of that, with the amount of displays they have between the Cann Gardens and Lake Ponca Park, they often notice that the displays tend to overlap each other.

“One time, we were at the gardens and I have three people helping me set these displays up and Elaine is running. She runs to her car, goes down 14th, and comes back and says that we’ve got to move it. If she is on Cann Drive, she is just running up the road. That is what makes it work,” says the President of the Festival of Angels, Bob Henderson.

It is stories like this that truly show the volunteers’ dedication to the festival and wanting the citizens to have the best experience possible.

Once the displays are placed, the Festival of Angels volunteers string hundreds of power cords and controllers to prepare for opening night. Timers are placed at the Cann Memorial Gardens and meticulously programed to turn on and off at certain times of the day and night.

Ponca City Energy also uses their bucket truck to place the directional angels on the street lights and the large angel at the Pioneer Woman statue. The workers and volunteers need to have these placed on opening day to let the community know that the festival is open to the public.

The Festival of Angels host their opening night party on Thanksgiving Eve. At this party, the festival volunteers put together drinks and snacks, Santa and Mrs. Claus visit, two teams, one sponsored by Phillips 66, of Clydesdales come to take attendees around the show, and more are offered to those in attendance.

For the rest of the festival season, a volunteer comes to the park every day at 5 pm to open the park, turn the lights on, and get the hut ready for the hut volunteers. After everything is set up and the volunteers are ready, the park is open to the public. Every night, two maintenance volunteers drive through the Lake Ponca Park, Cann Memorial Gardens, and past the Angel at the Pioneer Woman at different times to catalog anything that needs to be fixed. After their drive through, they make a list of the displays that need to be repaired for the next day. These volunteers put an insane amount of time and effort into making the festival look amazing for the community.

With the end of December comes the end of the season. As the weather permits, the volunteers head to the three locations and begin taking down the displays. The volunteers begin to collect the cords and turn off the controllers and timers at the Cann Memorial Gardens to begin the process. The Parks and Rec department volunteers their people for another two days to help take everything down and place it back into storage. Sober Brothers donates a crane every year to remove and install the large angel.

Overall, an extreme amount of time and effort goes into the Festival of Angels to make it the magical experience that the community knows and loves. The dedicated volunteers affiliated with the Festival of Angels work tirelessly year round to put together this show. This is a nonprofit organization and the donations they get during the season go back into the program to buy replacement lights, new displays, and anything else they might need to run the festival. They also participate in parades in Ponca City, Newkirk, Tonkawa, and Blackwell.

If you are looking to volunteer, which is desperately needed, or you have any questions, you can contact the treasurer, Elaine McDonald, at elainemcdonald007@gmail. com and 580-763-7857, or the Festival of Angels’ President, Bob Henderson, bobhenderson1963@gmail. com and 580-362-6744.