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Bethel Park pumpkin display benefits MS society

By Harry Funk 3 min read
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Kelly, Maddie and Mia Reuschling with some of their family’s 146 pumpkins

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Amy Reuschling is excited about reviving the family tradition of making a patch of carved pumpkins in her Bethel Park yard for Halloween.

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Amy Reuschling is excited about reviving the family tradition of making a patch of carved pumpkins in her Bethel Park yard for Halloween.

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Amy Reuschling is excited about reviving the family tradition of making a patch of carved pumpkins in her Bethel Park yard for Halloween.

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There are pumpkins galore getting ready for Halloween at the Reuschling home in Bethel Park.

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There are pumpkins galore getting ready for Halloween at the Reuschling home in Bethel Park.

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There are pumpkins galore getting ready for Halloween at the Reuschling home in Bethel Park.

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There are pumpkins galore getting ready for Halloween at the Reuschling home in Bethel Park.

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There are pumpkins galore getting ready for Halloween at the Reuschling home in Bethel Park.

Maybe the Great Pumpkin won’t show up, but a great number of pumpkins will.

Actually, they already have, after Amy and Rich Reuschling decided they wanted to revive their tradition of displaying the orange gourds in their Bethel Park yard for Halloween. They went to where lots of folks go looking for good deals: craigslist. And they found a man named Steve from Irwin.

“He said, ‘If you come out, I want you taking them all,’ not just the 90 he thought he had,” Amy explained. “So we went out, bought them, got them all for $85. And when we got home, we found out there were 146.”

Now they’re covering the Reuschlings’ deck, waiting to be carved and put out for the neighborhood to see after a four-year Halloween hiatus.

“We did 70 that year,” Amy said about the 2011 effort. “This is upping our game a bit. We’ll see how it turns out.”

The tradition started back in the 1990s, when two of the Reuschlings three daughters, Mia and Kelly, were just little, and the third, Maddie, wasn’t quite here yet.

“This is our uncle’s original idea,” Maddie recalled about Amy’s brother, Jeff Yeckel. “He had an obsession with ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas,’ which is the Disney movie that kind of focuses around a Skellington that has this big, live pumpkin patch. So he had the idea to do our own.”

Ten pumpkins went into the yard that first year, and the family considered that to be a big deal.

“And then every year we would do 10 more, and 10 more,” Amy said.

As the display grew, so did its popularity among neighbors and trick-or-treaters, who had the treat not only of receiving candy but getting their pictures taken with their favorite pumpkins.

Often, the Reuschlings would receive offers of contributions toward the cause.

“I always say no, because it’s just something we do for the neighborhood and the kids,” Amy said. “But this year, we’re going to take donations, and we’re going to be giving them to the MS society.”

She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2000, and since then family members have participated in fundraising and awareness events for the Pennsylvania Keystone Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. Amy has contacted the chapter, and representatives are enthusiastic about the Reuschlings helping with their pumpkin patch.

Minus a few that don’t make it that far, the great majority of the 146 pumpkins are subject to carving before the family puts them on the lawn Halloween afternoon.

“Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, there will be anywhere between five and 15 people here at a time,” Amy said. “They’re all over my house in every room on the first floor carving pumpkins. They’ll be out here on the deck. They’ll be in my dining, kitchen, living room.”

The pumpkins need to be prepared first.

“Mom cleans out a lot of the guts, because we don’t like to,” Mia explained.

The family anticipates a welcome response from their neighborhood on Eastview Road, where Amy and Rich grew up and trick or treated as kids. Apparently, neighbors missed seeing the annual display.

“The first year we didn’t do it, ugh, it was awful,” Amy said. “Everybody was so upset: ‘Where are the pumpkins? Where are the pumpkins?’ So the crazy pumpkin people are back, I guess. Maybe we’ll have to start doing it year after year again.”

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