Author: Maggie Prosser

The Wanamaker Light Show returned with gusto this weekend after Philadelphians held their breath over the last year about the fate of the deeply cherished tradition.

For nearly 70 years, the voice of John Facenda, then Julie Andrews, and a charmingly low-tech cast of twinkling characters have ushered in the holiday merriment for generations of Philadelphians. This year’s spectacle took on renewed significance as the future of the Light Show and the adjoining Dickens Village dimmed.

“This is deeply personal to us as Philadelphians, and we like to save stuff. We’re nostalgic to a fault,” said Kathryn Ott Lovell, leader of the Save the Light Show effort, a grassroots campaign that secured the show’s encore despite the sale of its longtime host, the Macy’s store in Center City.

The successful fundraising effort included more than 700 individual donors and gifts from philanthropic foundations.

“Christmas isn’t Christmas without the Wanamaker Light Show,” said Paulette Steffa, who was among the first people who lined up at the door for the Saturday matinee, braving temperatures in the low 40s and gusty winds. By noon, the line outside the Wanamaker Building snaked from Market to Drury Streets; just 15 minutes later, about 1,100 people flooded the famed foyer. More than 7,000 attended the show’s opening day on Friday.

Steffa, 72, has been a Light Show regular since its debut in 1956, when she was 3 years old. On Saturday, she was decked out in a red sweater matching the show’s silhouettes and a plastic John Wanamaker shopping bag from the Bicentennial.

At the stroke of 12:30 p.m., kids and kids-at-heart alike flocked around the Wanamaker Eagle and tilted their chins upward to the magic Christmas tree. They oohed and aahed at the twinkling candy canes, glitzy Sugar Plum Fairies, and jolly snowmen.

Debbie Miller, 68, came as a child with her parents, then with her husband, then with their children — and maybe, someday, she hopes, their grandchildren. The show’s warmth melts away troubles, she said.

“There’s that feeling of there’s still some good in this world, there’s still some positive energy in this world,” Miller, of Chester County, said. “We all have our daily struggles, but when you come here, it’s a little bit of an escape from that. It just makes you good.”

While many, like Steffa and the Millers, are regular visitors, Saturday was a long-awaited homecoming for Evelyn Poole: This was the 73-year-old’s first time seeing the show since she worked in the Wanamakers lingerie department and Santa’s Workshop as a teenager. She brought along her 7-year-old grandson for the occasion.

What will happen to the beloved attraction in the coming years remains uncertain: There is more money to be raised, ownership to be settled, and a long-term preservation plan to be devised.

But for at least one more season, Philadelphians can rejoice in the glow of the magic Christmas tree.

Amira Brown doesn’t feel hope or joy seeing pictures of her son, Steven Dreuitt Jr.

When she seeks solace, she instead turns to the people and things that Dreuitt touched, she told a gathering Saturday in an East Mount Airy church basement ballroom. She thinks of a young girl nicknamed “Precious” — a girl her son mentored and trained to play basketball, and who grew up to be a coach.

“Every time I see her play, that puts a smile on my face,” Brown said. “I know that Steven taught her. Steven did that.”

Dreuitt was among those killed when a medical jet crashed on Cottman Avenue in Northeast Philadelphia earlier this year. All six people who were aboard the plane — including an 11-year-old girl — died; at least 24 people were injured, and dozens of nearby homes caught fire or were damaged by debris.

“I just keep trying to keep my head up, and I just keep going,” Brown said of the grief. “I just keep pushing.”

Brown retold the events of Jan. 31 before a somber, 50-person crowd at Oxford Presbyterian Church as part of an annual remembrance service for grieving families. She said she had been messaging with her grandson Ramesses Raziel Dreuitt Vazquez on Jan. 31 just before the crash, which occurred a little after 6 p.m.; Dreuitt’s older son was at home waiting for his parents to return, she said.

Dreuitt, 37, was driving his fiancee, Dominique Goods-Burke, and Ramesses, then 9, home from Macy’s when the Learjet medical transport plummeted from the sky, slammed into the ground, and exploded.

The father — a family man who loved playing video games with his sons and cooking at his job at the Philadelphia Catering Co. — died at the scene. Goods-Burke, 34, described by her family as a fierce woman of “confidence, warmth, and creativity,” was hospitalized for months before she died of her injuries. Ramesses suffered serious burns to more than 90% of his body, requiring extensive medical treatment.

Ramesses, now 10, has been transferred from a Boston hospital to one in New Jersey, according to Brown. His mother recently told CBS Philadelphia the boy hopes to be home by Christmas.

While Brown spoke extensively about her pain, she also used the pulpit to recognize and bring light to the nearly 150 lives celebrated at the event, led by funeral director Ervina White Beauford.

“When things happen, people talk,” she said. “But once the talk stops, there’s no one there but us. We all have different stories, but the one thing we all have in common is the pain, the hurt, and the sorrow that never goes away.”