HUMAN INTEREST · DEER PARK

There is a house on Namleps Lane in Deer Park that marks the occasions most people only talk about.

James Hentschel, 48, has lived there for eleven years, and when he heard Dolly Parton had died he spent about 15 hours putting roughly 10,000 LED bead lights on the house, the windows and the bushes.

“She’s an icon,” he told Newsday. “I grew up listening to all her songs so it felt like a good way to celebrate her life.”

It is not his first. He has done tributes for Ozzy Osbourne and Hulk Hogan, a display for the Knicks when they won the championship, and a 9/11 tribute in September.

“We decorate for all the holidays,” he said.

The habit goes back further than the house.

“I’ve always liked lights,” he said. “I hooked up my first car with all lights and it just gradually got better or worse.”

The Dolly display ran sunset to sunrise, and he was willing to leave it up past the weekend if people kept coming by — which is the part that makes a lit-up house a neighborhood event instead of a hobby.

He had company statewide. The state Department of Transportation put Parton lyrics on its highway signs — “JOLENE, JOLENE, JOLENE, JOLENE. PLEASE DON’T SPEED” on the Long Island Expressway — and seventeen New York landmarks, including One World Trade Center, were lit in her honor.

Deer Park got there first, one extension cord at a time.

Sources: Newsday · Town of Babylon