Rebuilding the Star

Saturday, November 13, 2021

This morning we went with some friends out to “the Star” and worked on totally “rebuilding” our community star.  The Star is a huge star that hangs off a bluff on the side of our mountain that we light from Thanksgiving until the new year.  It’s so large that pilots of airplanes on the flight path to land at the Birmingham International airport will sometimes point it out to passengers.  The star was originally the project of Max’s parents Sunday School class at Lee’s Chapel UMC, over 50 years ago.  The original layout was done by one of our power company engineers as the star is located under a high-power line that runs across our mountain.  We sort of inherited the maintenance/lighting of the star a number of years ago and when we retired and aren’t in the community nearly as much, we sort of handed it off to Max’s cousin Donna and Barry who had been helping us for years.  We have done many repairs over the years but, with Barry and Donna, decided that this was the year for a major rebuild.  We met Donna and Barry and their son Brandon and friend Chris (who purchased our house) out at the bluff at 8:00 and began the work installing new anchors and cabling.  There is a lot of hiking and climbing involved and previously it also required repelling.  Since we aren’t so young any more with the new design installation we are hoping to avoid the need for repelling.  We had to drill holes into the rock faces, install new tie offs for the star points and clear a lot of debris as well as install cables.  By noon the drill and saw batteries needed recharging as did some of us, so hopefully some more work can be done over the next few days so the new star can shine this Christmas season.  We are so thankful for our wonderful family and friends who are helping to continue a tradition that means so much to so many in our community.