Donations Keep Carlin Aglow at Christmas

December 1, 2017
Ruth Young donated many of her mother’s Christmas decorations to the Carlin Open Door Senior Center.

Eva Perry’s generosity and love of Christmas still keep Carlin aglow during the holidays, even though she died in 2006 at 103 years old.

Her daughter, Ruth Young, 82, donated many of her mother’s decorations and ornaments to the Carlin Open Door Senior Center and the Carlin United Methodist Church.

“We’re grateful she gave us a couple of different-sized artificial trees,” says Judy Bradshaw, who works at the center. “We put one in the lounge and another in the dining room. There’s also a Christmas village and boxes of ornaments that remind us of Eva.”

Ruth says her mother loved Christmas.

“She decorated the whole house and even put wrapping paper on the wastebaskets,” says Ruth. “She grew up in an era when people went out and cut their own Christmas tree and made their ornaments. She used paper strips to make garland and cardboard paper rolls for candles.”

Ruth still has a Nativity scene made in the mid- to late-1940s by the Concordia Project.

“It has beautiful little figurines and has held up over the years. It always reminds me of how my mom made the holidays a wonderful time for us.”