Eggshelland Easter Display: 2007

There’s a world-famous Easter display in our hometown of Lyndhurst, Ohio.  Perhaps you’ve seen it on TV sometime in the last few years.  In 2006, it was shown on The Today Show.  This year, CNN showed it on the morning of Easter Sunday.  It’s called Eggshelland!

Each year, Ron and Betty Manolio of Lyndhurst, Ohio, put forth a herculean effort to create a fresh and original set of displays made from colored eggshells.  This year marks the 50th anniversary of Eggshelland, so the Manolio’s made sure they used over 50,000 shells in the displays. 

Here’s what the final result looks like from the air!  Those displays are all made from colored eggshells! (Thanks go to the Lyndhurst Fire Department for taking this picture.) 

Betty and Ron Monolio, the creators of Eggshelland, were kind enough to pose for a picture when we visited the displays.  Ron’s even wearing an Eggshelland Hat!

Each year Betty and Ron set up an information booth in their garage, complete with photos from previous years, newspaper clippings, and other information about Eggshelland.  You can even buy shells!

Here’s how the Eggshelland displays are created:

First, the Manolios come up with a theme.  The theme for 2007 is “A Blast from the Past.”  Once they have a theme, Betty draws a plan for the displays on a special piece of paper covered with a grid of small boxes.  She and Ron color the picture and then count up the number of eggs required, and the colors needed. 

Here’s this year’s plan for the Jetsons display:

Then, Ron and Betty make sure they have enough shells of the required colors on-hand.  They have a wonderful deal to get extra-large eggshells from a local restaurant.  They paint each shell by hand with a special colorful enamel paint. 

Then, they layout the grid of the drawing and start placing little eggshell support sticks in the ground.  The eggshells are then placed over the sticks. 

When all is finished … this is what the result looks like!

So, here are the other special Eggshelland displays for 2007 … a Scooby-Doo display, and a Flintstones display.  Below are Betty and Ron’s plans for the displays:

And here are the final results.  First, Scooby and Shaggy!

Then, The Flintstones!

The displays are up each year from Palm Sunday to just after Easter.  However, this year was a bit different.   

Unfortunately for Eggshelland, our dear city of Lyndhurst in Northeast Ohio was blanketed with over two feet of heavy snow over Easter weekend (April 8th)!  So, the Manolios couldn’t take down the display on the day after Easter.  In fact, we had such bad weather during the Palm Sunday-Easter week, that very few people really got to see the displays at all! 

The snow didn’t melt enough to see the displays until the Thursday after Easter.  So, the Manolios graciously extended the life of the 2007 display until April 24th. 

We saw the Display on April 14th, and the damage from the heavy snow was evident throughout the display.  Here you can see how the snow pushed down the eggshells on their support sticks so hard that the sticks poked through and broke the shells. 

Ron Manolio reports that there were other years when the displays were damaged.  In 1998, a hail storm destroyed 10,238 shells. In 2002, an ice storm on top of 6 inches of snow broke 11,941, and in 2005, 6 inches of heavy wet snow smashed 5,633 shells.  They won’t have a report on this year’s damage until after they’re done cleaning up, but Ron estimates that all of the eggshells in the cross are damaged, as well as damage to eggshells in other displays.

So, a final Happy Easter from Lyndhurst, Ohio!  Watch for the Eggshelland display next year!