PORT ANGELES — Here could be the hardest-working symbol in show business.
The peace sign, now showing on the Dollar Tree just outside Port Angeles, is up there in lights for lots of reasons, said its instigator, Cindy Frederick.
The Dollar Tree store manager wanted to send out a message of peace on Earth, and she wanted to send it in green, since that’s the designated color for the environmentally conscious.
She also thought her 12-foot-high, 5,000-light symbol would bathe Dollar Tree in a nice light.
The store, positioned as it is beyond the city limit at 3456 E. U.S. Highway 101, can use a little extra attention, she felt.
Frederick got the idea around Thanksgiving to put a giant peace sign on the west side of her workplace.
Last thing seen
“I thought it would be cool if it was the last thing people saw when they’re driving out of town,” she said this week.
First, though, Frederick phoned her district manager in Port Orchard, Kathleen Milanovich.
She — and we can’t resist this expression — gave the manager the green light to start illumination.
“It seemed like the right thing to do,” Milanovich said Monday.
So Frederick spent her own money on 40 strings of lights plus tubing and duct tape for mounting.
“It took five of my male friends to put it up there,” she said.
It also took 15 more strings of bulbs, for a total of 55 strands.
Frederick said the sum for the sign was only about $200. She considers it money well-spent.
“There has been no negativity,” from shoppers, she said. “I have a lot of young people working here,” and some called the sign “so cool.” It’s just “a fun thing for them to be part of.”
And though Frederick didn’t attribute this to vibrations from the green symbol, she said Dollar Tree enjoyed a very good Christmas, sales-wise.
Future uncertain
The future of the symbol, however, is uncertain.
Peace “is not just a Christmas-time thing,” Frederick said. It’s a year-round wish, naturally.
She said the symbol is not at all an anti-troops message, adding that Dollar Tree has held Operation Home Front toy drives to support military families.
And Frederick hopes to keep her peace sign up a little longer, at least as long as most of its lights stay bright.
Milanovich, for her part, figured the sign would come down some time after New Year’s Day — but left the door open slightly to an extension.
“We like to hear that the community enjoyed it,” the district manager said.
Other peace signs
The bright green beacon isn’t the only sign of its kind in these parts. Gary Smart, owner of Gary’s Marine Canvas just west of Sequim on U.S. Highway 101, put up a light-festooned peace symbol shortly before Christmas 2006. It’s since been stolen, then returned, relighted and rehung.
These nights, three years later, that sign still shines.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladaily news.com.
