‘Larryville’ at the Everett Mall is a Christmas gift to all

A train rounds the bend, approaching a sign that says “You are now in Bedford Falls.” Near the scene from the Christmas classic “It’s a Wonderful Life,” ice skaters glide on the Hidden Pond. At the edge of the fantasy town, a carousel is turning and a Ferris wheel spins.

The lit-up Christmas village is on display in a window near the entrance to Macy’s at Everett Mall. As I walked past, I knew I had seen it before — it’s “Larryville.”

“I’m glad that it lives on,” said Everett’s Larry O’Donnell, 78, who earlier this year donated much of his massive holiday village collection to the Everett Mall.

It was Dec. 21, 2012, when O’Donnell’s Larryville village was featured in The Herald. The mini-Christmas wonderland then occupied about 100 square feet — much of the dining room and living room — in his big house. To create the display, O’Donnell pushed together a dining table, a ping-pong table, a card table and the kitchen table his parents had when he was a child.

A collector for about a dozen years, O’Donnell stored more than 120 village structures in his basement during the off season — until this year.

This spring, it was time for Larry and Joyce O’Donnell to downsize. After 46 years in their Grand Avenue home, which was built in 1905, they moved to a much smaller place near Cascade High School.

“The big house was too much for us anymore,” O’Donnell said. A retired Everett School District administrator, he had coronary bypass surgery this summer. His recovery has gone so well he’s back to taking long bike rides with a group he has ridden with for years.

Before their move, they had a big sale at the house. “We gave stuff away and threw stuff away,” O’Donnell said. They made a vow not to rent a storage unit. Without room to display or store the holiday village, they didn’t want to sell Larryville piece by piece. O’Donnell decided the bulk of it should go to a place where many people, children especially, would enjoy it.

He talked with Glen Bachman, the Everett Mall’s general manager. Both men are members of the Rotary Club of Everett. O’Donnell said Bachman had visited his home during previous holiday seasons. “He was very interested. Within that week, we loaded up 90 percent of it. I gave it to the mall,” said O’Donnell, adding that he bought pieces over so many years he doesn’t know their total value.

He kept some pieces for sentimental reasons.

At his home in 2012, the Larryville display included spots named for O’Donnell’s family members.

“Jack’s Auto Parts” was there in honor of O’Donnell’s brother. Jack O’Donnell, a former teacher, retired a year ago after compiling The Herald’s “Seems Like Yesterday” column for years. Other structures were named for his son, his nephew and a granddaughter.

On Wednesday, shoppers carrying last-minute purchases hurried past the village, which is behind glass to keep pieces from being taken.

“It is absolutely fun,” Bachman said. “It took Larry years to collect what it is you’re seeing, from all his travels around the country.”

On one of their road trips together, Larry and Jack O’Donnell visited A Christmas Story House and Museum in Cleveland, the setting for the 1983 movie “A Christmas Story.”

With Larryville, O’Donnell made an idealized version of a bygone world. There are no big-box stores or jammed parking lots in the village now on view in the mall.

O’Donnell will never forget Christmas window shopping in the Everett of his boyhood. The department store he remembers best was Rumbaugh-MacLain’s, on the corner of Wetmore Avenue and California Street. Later the Bon Marche, it’s now Trinity Lutheran College.

“They had huge displays. I remember Santa in that window,” he said.

His donation is a gift to the whole community. A glimpse of nostalgia, that village is a bit of magic in the midst of modern commerce.

“When I was a kid, that was the sort of thing I could look at for hours,” O’Donnell said.

Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460; jmuhlstein@heraldnet.com.

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