When Ed Keepers was a little kid back home in Bucks County, Pa., there was really only one place to go, to see Christmas lights and decorations.
Real Christmas lights and decorations.
The kind that only Wanamaker’s could put on every year.
“It was something to see, I can tell you that,” said Keepers, the co-owner of Classic Furniture in Sabraton.
He grew up just outside of Philadelphia, and every Christmas season when he was little, his parents would swaddle him his warm coat, hat and gloves, and drive him downtown for the show.
Wanamaker’s was Philly’s venerable department store, housed in an appropriately ornate building that commanded a whole block of Market Street, in the shopping district.
The Romanesque interior court was done out with marble, columns and the aptly named Grand Organ, the 18,000-pipe keyboard acquired from the St. Louis World’s Fair of 1904.
When Wanamaker’s opened in 1911, President William Howard Taft took the train in from Washington, D.C., that day to dedicate the place himself.
And the store that sold everything owned Christmas.
All 14 floors shone with lights, decorations and displays.
But Keepers, who grew up to be skilled cabinet-maker, woodworker and co-owner of Morgantown’s Classic Furniture, would one day have a hand in the Christmas decorations at an even more marquee address.
The decorations, by the numbers
He just spent eight days over Thanksgiving in the nation’s capital last month at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., helping get the White House ready for Christmas.
This is his second year to be invited back.
It’s all volunteer work, and to get in, you have to draft a 2,500-word essay detailing any professional experience in the area you have, along with why you want to be part of it all.
“Part of it all,” is a good descriptor for this year’s “We the People” theme, selected by First Lady Jill Biden.
Keepers was among 150 volunteers from across the U.S. and its territories who dug in with their own creativity for the project.
There are more 83,000 lights aglow as part of the decorations in every room of the most-known address in the Republic.
He and his fellow volunteers handled 12,000 ornaments, draped 15,000 feet of ribbon and garland and made sure 1,600 bells were in place to ring in the holiday.
Keepers, who has worked with White House staff on decorating projects before, enjoyed the highest security clearance for volunteers and helped put his touch on the trimmings in the Oval Office – even if tiny microphones were placed in the designs after the place was swept by the Secret Service.
The real gifts
Meanwhile, there were displays honoring first responders – the police, firemen and paramedics who keep their fellow citizens safe – to go with the self-portraits of students of the nation’s Teachers of the Year from 2021, as a nod to Jill Biden’s work as an educator.
In honor of Hanukkah, a new addition this year is a wood-and-silver menorah, crafted by White House carpenters and lit regularly during the eight days of the Jewish celebration.
Keepers was a worker and a tourist, at the same time, he said. He had to look twice at all that Christmas tree – the official White House Christmas tree – in the Blue Room.
This year’s is a Concolor fir harvested from Keepers’ native Pennsylvania, done out with handmade renderings of the official birds of all 50 states, U.S. territories and the District of Columbia.
As a now-official West Virginian, he appreciated that inquisitive cardinal staring back him when he snagged a look.
Keepers liked how all the volunteers, who came from everywhere, got along – even when political discussions would sometimes pervade the holiday cheer.
“We all had one thing in common,” he said.
Jill Biden said the same.
“The soul of our nation is, and always has been, ‘We the People,’” she told the volunteers at the event that honored them.
“The values that unite us can be found all around you, a belief in possibility and optimism and unity,” she continued.
“Room by room, we represent what brings us together, during the holidays and throughout the year.”
Meanwhile, in the neighborhood …
The other day back at Classic Furniture, Keeper’s co-owner Scott Anderson, a woodworker and upholsterer by training, was talking to a customer about antiques when Keeper came back after lunch.
Their establishment is housed in a former auto parts store on Listravia Avenue.
A lot of its trappings and design features – stained glass, columns and crown moldings, were salvaged by Keepers from old houses in Morgantown that were being knocked down.
The storefront windows are from the former Montgomery Ward in Mountaineer Mall.
“Yeah, somebody called and said, ‘You know they’re throwing that glass away?’ Keepers said, grinning. “I told ‘em, ‘I’ll be right there.’”
The furniture in their store is high-end, and there are pieces from Europe and Asia interspersed about.
“We try to get stuff that other people don’t have,” Anderson said.
There is another vibe, both men said.
“It’s not a museum,” Anderson said. “It’s your living room.”
“Yeah,” Keepers said. “Our stuff is made for putting your feet up and watching a football game.”
That’s why Keepers enjoys going to the White House with each invite, he said.
Even with all that pageantry and history, it’s still the People’s House, he said.
Be it Christmas, Hanukkah or Kwanzaa, as he said, holidays are really about hope and renewal – it’s just what you choose to do on the day after.
As a kid from Philly, he was moved – maybe even more than he realized, at first – when he regarded one of 13 original copies in the White House of the U.S. Constitution on display there.
“It says, ‘We the People,’ and we’re all in this together.”
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