ANTIGO — A lost dog travels thousands of miles to find its way home. Trained intelligence pilots with the U.S. military begin spotting unidentified flying objects. A man technically dead for minutes after drowning suddenly, somehow, takes a breath.
Life is full of mysteries, big and small.
Some who work at Aspirus Langlade Hospital recently became aware of a small one.
The story began last October, when a hospital-wide pumpkin carving and painting contest, open to all employees, was announced.
As it happened, the contest was something of a bust: only two pumpkin entries wound up in the competition, and no winner was officially declared.
The unusual pumpkin painted and submitted by Mackenzie Williams, though, still received ample attention.
Employing a basic black and white color scheme, Williams, a Nutritional Services Assistant at Aspirus, painted the face of a person no one would associate with Halloween.
Jesus.
Not just Jesus, either, but the crucifix version of him, wearing a stoic face and a crown of thorns.
Her depiction is realistic, and as such, thought-provoking. At seeing and contemplating the meaning of the pain in this pumpkin Jesus’ eyes, one might even feel troubled.
Ask her why she decided to enter the contest, and the painter herself will tell you she and her three sisters have always possessed an artistic bent, a trait inherited from their late father, Tom Piper.
“My dad was known to be a very good artist, and I think that’s just a trait that he passed along to his daughters,” she said. “He did painting and he was very good with an airbrush. He did a lot on vehicles. There’s a local van around here that has a sunrise on it — he did that 30 years ago. It was a bright yellow van and it used to be the poster vehicle for the Badgerland Classic Car Show.”
She decided to paint Jesus’ face on the pumpkin almost on a whim.
“I don’t like to carve pumpkins, so I thought, ‘Well, I’ll just paint something on there,’” Williams said. “I also guess I’m not such a fan of Halloween. I don’t like dark and scary stuff — I like more happy, positive things. So I just thought, ‘Let’s paint Jesus on there.’ His face is serious on the pumpkin, but I guess to me, anything that has to do with Jesus is positive.
I don’t know how the idea popped into my head — it just came to me.”
After Halloween, Williams’ pumpkin sat in the front lobby of Aspirus until Christmas. In those roughly two months, visitors took notice of it, according to Williams — first for its painting of Christ, and then, come December, for its strange longevity.
“There’s no sealer on it — it’s only acrylic paint — and I think the only thing that’s really changed is that a few flakes chipped off of there,” Williams said. “But people would come in and rub it. I don’t know why, but maybe they thought it was a stroke of luck. Girls from the front desk would come and say, ‘Somebody wants to talk to you,’ and quite a few people just told me, ‘That pumpkin is awesome,’ or ‘Good job,’ or ‘I can’t believe it’s still going.’ One girl told me she actually took a picture of it and put it as her screensaver on her cell phone.”
Anna Harvey and Mary Petroskey, first impression specialists at Aspirus, confirmed this.
“It gets hot in here. We had it on a table right by the fireplace. So we were kind of afraid at the time that it would get bad quickly, but it didn’t,” Harvey said.
“There’s no paint on the bottom, so it should have soft spots there at least I should think,” Petroskey said. “And if you really think about it, kids paint pumpkins, but they don’t stay good — they get soft and rot.”
“People picked it up and were touching the bottom of the pumpkin and were like, ‘Wow,’” Harvey laughed.
When the pumpkin finally went home with Williams after Christmas, it wasn’t forgotten.
“A lot of employees at Aspirus were like, ‘Oh, how is your pumpkin doing?’ And I was like, ‘It’s still good!’” Williams said. “Just joking, I said, ‘Maybe it will make it until Easter,’ and I remember somebody saying, ‘Well, Lent is only a month away.’”
Somewhat shockingly, Williams’ joke seems to have come true.
March 31, Easter Sunday, she posted a picture of it on the well-known Antigo Information Facebook page, then, last week, took it back to the Aspirus lobby as well to show coworkers.
While it would be an exaggeration to say they were as shocked as Jesus’ disciples are described as having been upon seeing Him appear among them in the weeks following his death, they were, it’s fair to say, quite surprised.
“She took it home after Christmas and then we hadn’t heard anything,” Petroskey said, “so when we saw it, we were like, ‘Oh my goodness.’”
Most who saw Williams’ post on Antigo Information have responded similarly.
“This is absolutely an Easter miracle. It’s beautiful!” commented one woman.
“There is much more going on here than just a good pumpkin grower!” wrote another.
Williams, a Christian as well, expressed matching sentiments, saying that because the Jesus pumpkin sat for so long at the hospital, hopefully it helped lift the spirits of those who needed it most.
“Some people say it’s divine intervention — I think it’s just a good reminder that if you have God and Jesus, anything is possible,” she said. “It was just nice because for a lot of patients here, it was just a good reminder to have faith and keep going.”
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