By Leila
Atassi, The Plain DealerThe Plain Dealer
Lyndhurst, Ohio -- Even Ronald Manolio’s workbench
in the
basement of his Lyndhurst home is a work of art. Covered in vibrant
drips and speckles like a Jackson Pollock masterpiece, the bench bears
the vestiges of thousands of hours spent working in Manolio’s media of
choice: Enamel paint and eggshells.
This week signals the end of an era for
curiosity-seekers and families who, for decades, pilgrimaged to
Manolio’s front yard every Easter to take in the elaborate display of
colored eggshells aptly known as Eggshelland. Manolio
died Tuesday at Regency Hospital in Richmond Heights of blood
poisoning, after complications arising from a dental procedure. He was
82.
Thursday afternoon, in the living room of the
Manolio’s Linden
Lane home, Betty Manolio, 79, flipped through scrapbooks commemorating
the displays that she and her husband designed and built with the help
of their growing family, transforming the quiet cul de sac into a
colorful tourist attraction nearly every spring since 1957.
It all began on a whim, she said, beaming at a
newspaper
clipping featuring their first-ever eggshell display — a multicolored
cross made up of 750 hollowed eggshells.
The couple had recently married and was
expecting
their first child when Ron Manolio, a Cleveland native who worked for
Channel 3 as a camera operator, thought it would be fun to decorate the
yard for the Easter season, his wife said. Family helped them collect
eggs, and Manolio used a paring knife to carefully slice off the tops of
the eggs and empty their contents. Then they colored the
shells with tempera paint and used wooden pins, hand-carved by
Manolio’s father, to secure them to the lawn. Manolio used string to
lay out the design in straight lines on the grass over a period of
several days.
Word of the yard art spread quickly throughout the
area, and
by Easter Sunday, crowds had gathered on the couple’s front lawn to
enjoy the design.
Manolio began planning early the following year
for
an even
more elaborate display, and a tradition was born — one that came to
define the entire Manolio family from January of each year until the
last of the eggs was cleared from the lawn.
In the decades that followed, the displays would
require as
many as 50,000 colored eggs. The Manolios enlisted the help of their
five grown children and ten grandchildren in carefully cracking open
the tops of eggs and emptying them. Owners of a local diner, The
Sidewalk Café in Painesville, which serves breakfast 24-hours a
day, agreed to let the Manolios break eggs for them, leave the edible
portion for the restaurant and take the shells home.
The Manolio children say they remember their
parents
picking
them up at the end of the school day and driving straight to the
restaurant to crack eggs.
Each year, the cross and an iconic Easter Bunny
character took
their places on the lawn, but the other images have changed to pay
homage to world events or simply showcase favorite fairy tales or pop
cultural trends.
When John Glenn became the first American to orbit
the Earth
in 1962, the Manolio’s built a papier-mache globe and rigged a bunny to
circle it.
They honored those who died in the Sept. 11
terrorist attacks
with an eggshell depiction of an American Flag and the Statue of
Liberty. And the U.S. Bicentennial in 1976 was commemorated with images
of Betsy Ross, and Revolutionary characters playing a fife and drum.
That display, which stayed on the lawn through
July
4 of that
year, survived the elements pretty well, Betty Manolio said. Her
husband just had to use care in mowing the lawn around the fragile eggs.
Other designs have been lighter in nature — Harry
Potter, The
Wizard of Oz and the Power Puff Girls among them. Members of the
Manolio extended family all pitched in to execute the finished product
and often contributed ideas to the following year’s design.
That decision ultimately was made by Betty
Manolio,
who
sketched the designs, then used large sheets of drafting paper with
tiny grids to determine exactly how many eggs of each color were
required. The shapes were then transferred to a rudimentary map of the
front yard and drafted to scale, to guide the Manolios’ children and
grandchildren in impaling each hollowed egg on wooden skewers and
mounting them on foam boards.
But the most painstaking task — painting each
delicate
eggshell — has always been Ron Manolio’s turf, his family said. After
the shells were washed and air-dried, he would spend hours in front of
the TV, performing a job he called "crumbing," using his thumbs to
smooth the edges of the cut shells.
Then he would retreat to his basement workshop,
where below
the warm glow of an overhead lamp, he used enamel paint to coat each
shell and set them on drying racks suspended from the ceiling. Eggs
that remained undamaged after they were displayed were boxed up,
catalogued by color and reused in subsequent years.
More than 300 boxes of colored eggshells fill the
Manolio
basement.
Through the years, Eggshelland has taken on a life
of its own.
The tradition has been featured on the "Montel Williams Show,"
"Ripley’s Believe it or Not," the "Today Show" and the Food Network’s
"Extreme Cuisine." It was the subject of a 2008 documentary film.
An Eggshelland devotee once spotted a
photo
of the
display in an English language newspaper while visiting Japan, Betty
Manolio said.
Locally, the display is legendary. One young
couple,
who
visited Eggshelland on their first date, became engaged there two years
later. To facilitate the proposal, the Manolios crafted a sign — made
of eggshells, naturally — that read, "Will You Marry Me?"
Thousands would line up in their vehicles to drive
past the
site each year. Many have told the Manolios that their parents brought
them as children, and now they’ve incorporated the pilgrimage into
their own family traditions.
And that — the Manolios say — is what Ron Manolio
lived for.
He spent most of every Easter Sunday greeting his guests on the front
lawn. And during the off season, Manolio papered the town with flyers
advertising the event. He passed out flyers at air shows, car shows,
family gatherings — even at his sister’s own funeral, his family
recounted in laughter Thursday.
Manolio, who loved interacting with people so much
that he
took a job as a school bus driver after he retired from Channel 3,
pledged he would continue the Eggshelland tradition until the day he
died, and he often asked for volunteers among his children to take up
the torch.
Betty Manolio and her daughters, Meribeth
Pannitto,
49, and
Melissa Harvey, 36, chuckled and shook their heads Thursday afternoon
when asked what would come of Eggshelland in Ron’s absence.
This Easter, they said, will be the last time
Eggshelland
adorns the Manolio yard. The family will pull together to create one
final grand display. Plans are in flux, but most likely will include
the image of Ron’s face and a farewell message.
It will be, they hope, a fitting tribute to the
man
whose
ambitious sense of tradition became a highlight of Easter Sundays for
thousands.
A funeral service will be at 10 a.m. Saturday at
St.
Francis
of Assisi Church, 6850 Mayfield Rd., Gates Mills. The family will
receive friends between 2 and 4 p.m. Friday at the Vicchiarelli Funeral
Home, 5252 Mayfield Road, Lyndhurst.
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