The lights outside Beau Monde Elite Fitness on S. Aurora Street and iFrog Marketing Solutions over on Bay Street have been changing color all fall. They were purple in September for Talbot Goes Purple, pink in October for breast cancer awareness, and yellow at the start of November for the service members who are not home yet. None of these are causes anyone around here needs to be sold on. They are the ones that have already come to touch most of the families in this county, and lighting up for them is a way to show support, together.
It may seem like a hard season to agree on much of anything. But nobody drives past a purple light and asks who put it up or where they stand on anything else. A light in a window is about the simplest thing one neighbor can say to another, which is that we know what you are carrying and we would like to show our support. That is what these buildings are doing, one color at a time.
Both businesses are part of Preston Automotive Group, which has been coordinating the color of its frog with meaningful causes for years. Doing it with a whole building is new, and something they had wanted to do for a long time but did not have the lighting to pull it off until now.
“Many years ago, when we gave out our first pink frog, we knew that we were starting something that would let the communities around us know that they were important to us,” said Dave Wilson Sr., founder of Preston Automotive Group. “We started hearing about how the pink frog helped someone and decided to support other groups and organizations.”
September is purple for Talbot Goes Purple, Talbot County’s youth substance abuse prevention program. The color turns up on porch lights and in store windows, at school events, and on the students who wear it themselves. It is there to tell kids they can get through the hard parts of growing up without substances, and that this community is behind them while they do.
October’s pink is where all of this started, and it is the one closest to home for Preston Automotive Group. Preston’s first frog was a pink one. Too many people here have had breast cancer impact their own families. This year’s Frog’s Fairway Golf Tournament raised $86,000, the highest total yet, with $60,000 going to Women Supporting Women in Salisbury and $26,000 to TidalHealth’s Sheila Zimmer Breast Cancer Screening Fund. All of it stays on the Shore, with the people who are in the middle of the fight right now. Lighting up the Beau Monde and iFrog buildings seemed like a next great step to show support.
Yellow is the color of the ribbon families have been tying to porch railings and mailboxes for generations while they wait for someone to come home from military service. There are many houses in this county with yellow ribbons up right now. The yellow lights are for them.
From November 4 through November 11, the lights are green, which is in support of veterans. Operation Green Light for Veterans is a national campaign that asks counties, businesses, and households to light up green in the week before Veterans Day, and the color was chosen for hope and for moving forward.
“We are so stoked that we can change the lights on the building to show support for our community and the people in it,” said Angie Wilson McCracken, President of iFrog Marketing Solutions. “We were all told from a young age that helping others and supporting the community would be some of the most important work we would do. Many of these causes are very close to our family and we know that we are not the only ones. Being able to change the lights and support the organizations and individuals working to better the community feels like what we are supposed to do.”
Cancer and addiction turn up in families that have nothing else in common. Veterans come home to every street in the county. That is the part worth holding onto. For a few weeks at a time, these lights give the whole town one thing to look at and agree on.
“My mom taught us to show the love every day and that is what these lights will do also,” Wilson said. “We will continue to show the love to our community and support the causes that mean so much to all of us.”
If there is a cause on the Mid-Shore that deserves a light, we would like to hear about it, and you don’t need a whole building to participate. A colored porch light bulb costs a few dollars, and it speaks just as loud.
