By Sydney Page
For The Washington Post
For the past few weeks, Bill Pyles and his family have been creating playful skeleton displays on their front lawn in Oxford, Ohio. People honk and cheer as they drive by.
While Pyles knew locals were tickled by his family’s towering skeleton exhibit, he did not know that it was serving as a daily bright spot for a cancer patient — until he received a letter in the mail on Sept. 10.
Pyles found an envelope in his mailbox addressed to “The Family Bone” and figured it might be a nasty letter, as sometimes people criticized his display — which often features two 12-foot skeletons, plus dozens of 5-foot skeletons and animals — for being up too far in advance of Halloween.
“I opened the letter, and it stopped me dead in my tracks in my driveway,” said Pyles, who started making skeleton displays on his front lawn last September ahead of Halloween, and decided to turn it into an annual family tradition.
They change the display twice a week — typically on Wednesdays and either Saturday or Sunday — and they put together elaborate scenes, such as skeletons washing a car, skeletons playing cornhole and skeletons bowling. The displays take several hours to decorate.
“It’s always been about fun antics,” said Pyles, noting that his wife, their son and two daughters — ranging in age from 21 to 28 — help decorate the displays, and come up with ideas.
The letter was penned by Tammy Weihe, an Oxford resident who was diagnosed with breast cancer in May. She had been undergoing radiation treatments every weekday for the past month, and she and her husband drove by the skeleton display each way as they made the 20-mile drive to the cancer center. It always made them smile.
“I have been driving past your house daily for the past 19 days on my way to radiation treatments. A highlight of my journey has been checking to see who else has ed the bone family and what they are up to,” Weihe wrote in the handwritten letter. “Thankfully, Wed, Sept. 11 is my final radiation treatment, though I may need to continue to drive by once in a while to see what’s new. Thanks for the diversion, Tammy.”
Pyles was blown away by the letter.
“We made a big difference in somebody’s life,” Pyles said, adding that he immediately shared the note with his family, and they were moved by it, too. They all agreed: “We’ve got a lot of work to do tonight,” Pyles said.
The Pyles family decided they would do a display to celebrate the end of Weihe’s radiation treatments. They started around 3:30 p.m. on the day they received the letter, and they worked until 9 p.m., making colorful signs with encouraging messages like “you got this,” “way to go Tammy” and “never give up.”
On her way home from her final treatment on Sept. 11, Weihe noticed the personalized display. It moved her to tears.
“It was very touching that somebody would go out of their way to make this special, and congratulate me on finishing,” Weihe said. “Kindness matters.”
Weihe — who is the fifth person in two generations to have breast cancer in her family — said it was difficult to keep her spirits up as she and her husband drove to radiation each day. The skeleton display offered a bit of levity.
“It was just fun,” she said. “It was a way to broaden my perspective on what was happening … It was good to relate and connect with people I didn’t know.”
Weihe and her husband moved to Ohio from Nebraska last May and never saw the Pyles family’s 2023 skeleton displays. Given how much joy the skeletons brought her on her daily commute, she decided to write a thank-you note. The story was first reported by Fox19.
“I think people do good things and they don’t always know it; they’re not always recognized,” she said. “It meant a lot.”
Pyles said the goal of the displays is to uplift people in the community — and he believes they have served their purpose.
“There’s not enough good stories, and there’s not enough humor in this world,” he said, adding that he regularly buys costumes and supplies to decorate the display with. Last year, they started off with just a few skeletons, but they have expanded their collection to around 50, including a skeleton dog, horse, cow and donkey.
“My wife was grabbing them every time we’d go shopping,” Pyles said. “People were loving it; they were cracking up.”
They switch up the scene twice a week to keep things interesting.
“It’s got to be a variety. If you drive by the same thing every day, it becomes very mundane,” Pyles said, adding that the most meaningful display to date was unquestionably the one for Weihe.
The family kept last year’s displays going from early September to a week after Halloween. This year, given the overwhelmingly positive response, they plan to continue decorating the displays year-round. They even have a calendar for the skeletons, filled with potential ideas.
“We’ve got plans for Thanksgiving, plans for Christmas, plans for St. Paddy’s day, plans for Easter,” Pyles said. “If they come down, they’re not going to be down for long.”
When asked “Why skeletons?” Pyles said the answer is simple: “We are all, no matter who you are, a skeleton inside,” he said. “No matter your race, religion, anything about you.”
Pyles said he hopes people who delight in his family’s displays might do something similar — even in a small way.
“Try to brighten one person’s day,” he said, “and you’ve done your job.”
