Coronavirus Can't Stop North Pole Airport In New City

NEW CITY, NY — The Cirlin family has shared their exuberant and creative display with the public for five years now, every year adding hand-built structures, lights and interactive displays, and always collecting donations for Angel Flight and People to People of Rockland.

In one way, 2020 was easier to put together, Gary Cirlin told Patch. After all, he usually travels extensively for work. That stopped in March.

The family knew 2020 would have to be different and that one of the things they needed to change is how people could enjoy it. "That was easy, stay in your car," he said. "But the main worry was a lot of our collections for the charities involved people getting out of their cars."

They wanted to still make sure that donations still flowed through, particularly for Angel Flight North East, a non-profit, tax exempt 501(c) charitable organization that provides free air transportation so that children and adults may access life saving medical care.

"They have had an incredibly tough year," Cirlin said. Angel Flight has airline partners who provide free seats, but many of their patients could not fly commercial. So the private pilot volunteers picked up the slack. "These miraculous hero pilots will fly three-four flights to take a patient here to there," Cirlin said. "We need to help them."

The Cirlins hit upon a couple of ideas. First, they helped Angel Flight set up a Venmo account and a neighbor who owns Steamboat marketing in Suffern printed up big signs with the QR codes.

"Anybody sitting in their car can literally just open their phone, zoom in and donate directly to Angel Flight," Cirlin said.

Then, the neighbor donated 100 masks with the North Pole Airport logo on them. The Cirlins have been selling them, and 100 percent of the proceeds go to Angel Flight.

"Then we accidentally fell upon an idea," he said. "A neighbor's son had a birthday while we were setting up. We told them 'bring the family up, we're going to light up the house and sing happy birthday.' Then we came up with the idea - why don't we do a reverse car parade for birthdays?"

So in 2020, for a $50 donation, family can fill out a google form to book a slot, drive up and tune to the FM station where the music and lights are synchronized, and at a certain point a special pre-recorded message comes on from Santa.

"That has been a huge success — we've got many birthdays already booked," Cirlin said.

For People to People of Rockland, the tweak was different. In the past the family collected new winter clothing for People to People. This year, their food pantry has really taken a hit, he said. "So we are collecting for that instead. In the first three days we collected 200 pounds of food."

Anyone who swings by to see the display should take non-perishable foodstuffs they can donate without getting out of the car. "Right by the driveway there's a red mailbox, lights are blinking on it — you can't miss it."

There are other tweaks to the display that are part of the North Pole Airport's pandemic protocols.

On the music track there's a recording every two to three songs asking people who get out of their cars to wear a mask and stay at least a reindeer apart.

"People have been really good about it," he said.

Last year, they added an interactive element with three big buttons at the edge of the property you could push to activate parts of the display. In July he started looking into what he would need to do from the electronic standpoint to make them contact-less.

He modified the three interactive stations to use passive infrared sensors."Now all they have to do is wave a hand and the interactive parts come to life," he said.

This year, the elf-run baggage x-ray machine still wraps everything as it goes through, and there's a can of lysol on the conveyor belt.

"Even the elves in the elf traffic control tower, if you look you'll see they're wearing masks," Cirlin said.

The house is at 12 Oriole Road. Go to the Facebook page for show times and more.