Last winter, 12-year-old Ellie Michaud looked out the window of a car as she passed through the Aroostook County town of Mapleton on the way to her home in Ashland. The twinkling lights of bells and candy canes and reindeer mounted to the town’s utility poles shined brightly.
Then she saw Ashland’s holiday lights. They were dim. Many of the bulbs had gone out.
“I realized our lights need to be better,” Michaud said.
So the seventh grader at Ashland District School decided to do something about it. She went to the Ashland Town Council, which is chaired by her father Tyler Michaud, to present an idea: she would fundraise the money needed to replace the lights herself.
Over the next 11 months, that’s exactly what she did. In total, Ellie Michaud raised $11,510 to replace the town’s 14 pole-mounted holiday lights.
She made and sold bracelets and earrings over the summer and sold lemonade and hot dogs at the Ashland Summer Fest and Big Woods Grass Drags, a summer snowmobile drag racing event. Michaud rallied businesses, including Presque’s Isle Tempo Employment Services and Ashland’s Northern Electric Inc. to sponsor lights. Other individuals and families sponsored lights in honor of loved ones.
And on Nov. 29, as the town held its annual holiday tree lighting, the gathered crowd was joined by Michaud in a bucket truck to turn on the new pole lights for the first time.
“It was really cool,” Michaud said. “I didn’t even know it was going to happen.”
The town’s existing lights were 20-plus years old, Ashland town manager Alicia Burby said. Now a series of brightly lit snowflakes dot three downtown streets.
“It’s an inspiration to everybody,” Burby said. “It’s really cool that she saw a need in the community and she didn’t wait for somebody else to take care of it. She went to work and raised the money in less than a year and made it happen.”
That’s a sentiment echoed by Michaud’s mother — Gretchen Michaud — and the Ashland community at large.
“We are very proud of her,” Gretchen Michaud said. “This is quite an accomplishment.”
“[People have] said that they’re really pretty and really nice and that I should be very proud of myself,” Ellie Michaud said.
As for her message to the community, Michaud kept it short and sweet — and in the holiday spirit.
“I’d like to say thank you to my donors, and Merry Christmas,” she said.
