As Suzanne Sturm swipes through her phone photos, the magnitude of a family tradition takes hold.

“Oh my gosh,” she says. “Here are the Lion King photos. There is Simba and Nala, and oh, here is Pride Rock,” pointing to images from eight years ago.

The timeframe falls slightly shy of the halfway point in what has become a 17-year labor of love led by the seven-member Sturm family of Waterford, Connecticut. Together with multiple friends and their children, the family spends countless weekends each year designing an extraordinary float on the front lawn of their 200-year-old home on Oil Mill Road. They then enter the float in the nearby Niantic’s annual holiday Light Parade.

Now celebrating its 30th year, the Light Parade provides its own form of pixie dust as children and families, often bundled from head to toe, watch with awe-filled eyes as lighted floats of all shapes, sizes, and themes travel down the community’s Main Street each December. The event delivers a huge slice of holiday spirit as it draws visitors from across the state, but for the Sturm family, the float-building itself has provided far more cherished memories.

“We first partnered with Safe Kids and did an Even Elves Buckle Up float. Then our first solo year as a family/neighborhood float we did Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. We then followed with floats themed around The Grinch, Polar Express, Lion King, Peter Pan, Heat/Snow Miser from The Year Without a Santa Clause, and Star Wars,” Suzanne recalls, noting that none would be a success without the support of other area families, including the Barbers, Cavalieris, Lisa Dreher, Gathys, Gonzalezs, Gigliottis, Mahoneys, Mogers, Murphys, Nowacks, Petcharks, Smiths, and Wyatts. Suzanne's good friend, Pam Watt, has also been a huge help throughout the years, even donning Princess Leia’s signature white costume from Episode 4.

“All our children have grown up together through this process,” Suzanne says. “As construction gets underway, we typically will work all day Saturday before enjoying lots of food and conversation in the evening. I can remember some years when the kids roasted marshmallows together in December. Everyone then returns on Sunday to continue the work. It’s just incredible.”

While some of the participating families have had to bow out for a year or two as their life obligations increased, the community-building the effort generates has never waned.

“What really makes it all work in the end is how each person plays a particular character in our chosen theme during the parade,” Suzanne says.

A good example of this was the first year the Sturm family and their friends tackled a Polar Express-themed float. Complete with a lighted “cow plow” on the front of the truck, the float looked like an exact replica of the train in the famed Tom Hanks’ movie.

“We had all the kids participating that year wear their pajamas and hide in the crowds lining the Niantic streets,” Suzanne explains. “We then had the conductor yell for the kids to bring their golden tickets, and all these children starting waving their tickets and walking toward the train to board it, leaving those around them wondering where they could get their tickets. The kids then sat inside the train by the windows drinking hot chocolate just like the movie, while the Hobo character sat atop the roof warming himself by a fire.”

Getting to a big reveal like this first begins with the vision of one man, chief float designer Jeff Sturm, Suzanne’s husband. A Pfizer exec by day, Jeff has always been a tinkerer. Suzanne says his mom can remember getting him a clock radio when he was 8 or 9, only to find that Jeff had dismantled the whole thing on his bedroom floor. Unfazed, Jeff rebuilt the radio piece by piece to understand the role each part plays. His intense curiosity and quest to understand have remained with him long after elementary school. In the couple’s 25 years of marriage, Jeff, who always drives the float, has renovated the family’s entire Federalist-inspired home, built an intricate playground, and put in a pool, yet building each year’s float is always top of mind.

“You can look at his eyes at times and see that he already is thinking ahead to next year’s float while working on the current one,” Suzanne says. “He has the vision in his head, and he knows how to make it happen.”

A quick survey of the family’s property highlights remnants of Jeff’s creative mind — the X-Wing Fighter and Tie Fighter from the Star Wars float still sit proudly in view, years after debuting in the Light Parade, along with an Imperial Destroyer. That year, Suzanne remembers families passing by their house and stopping to ask if they could pretend to pilot it during the construction phase. After all, Star Wars brings out the kid in everyone.

Then there was the Peter Pan float, a spectacular living “lite bright,” complete with a hand-crafted, life-sized lantern to house Tinkerbell, played by the Sturm’s then 5-year-old daughter, Colleen. In fact, the floats are so well done that the family typically wins the top prize in the Family Float Category each year, but the “best in show” status still eludes them.

Adding to the magic of the lighted, themed floats are the elaborate costumes that Suzanne, a longtime engineer at the local Millstone Power Plant and now a math teacher at Waterford High School, discovered she had a knack for making following a request by her sister to take a quilting class with her.

Suzanne absolutely loved the class and quickly discovered a hidden talent and passion for sewing in general, as well as quilting. Today, one area of her house could sub for a Hollywood costume shop.

“My attic is packed with costumes of all kinds. If one of my students says they need a costume for something, it’s likely that I have what they want,” she says.

Parade crowds recently saw Suzanne’s latest handiwork as the group’s Harry Potter float cruised through town December 8, 2018. Joining Harry were a decked-out Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, Dumbledore, Hagrid, Snape, Bellatrix Lestrange, the Beauxbaton girls, Dolores Umbridge, and an interactive Whomping Willow, just to name a few elements. A Quidditch match was in full swing as well, rounding out this year’s float theme, which had been on the drawing table for years — a popular request of the children who have been such a part of the tradition.

A few more pictures pass across Suzanne’s phone screen as she explains the additional intricacies of what will essentially be Hogwarts on wheels, but her face conveys two other important reasons for the collective effort — giving back and memory-making.

Niantic’s Main Street may be the beginning of the route, yet the impact of the tradition extends far beyond the paved roads and well into the hearts of those who have been blessed to participate years after the Sturm’s youngest squeezed into Tinkerbell’s lantern.

“We asked our oldest who is in college ‘if she still wanted to do this with us?’ Without hesitation, she responded: ‘YES!’”

Sincerest thanks to the Sturm family, Pamela Watt, Susan Smith, and Nicole Gathy for the wonderful photos from across the years. Story by Karen Gerboth