Some business owners have a five year plan. Josh Hartle had a wish that sounded more like a daydream. From the first season he ever hung lights, he told his friends the same thing. One day he wanted to decorate the White House. Not bid on it. Not win some big contract. Just be one of the people who got to do the work.
Last Thanksgiving, he did.
Josh owns Christmas Lights 419, the Christmas light installation company that decorates homes across Toledo and the surrounding towns. He is also active duty with the Air National Guard, stationed at the 180th Fighter Wing in Toledo. Both of those things matter to how this story played out, so keep them in the back of your mind.
The wish he kept saying out loud
For years it was a running line. Josh would be up on a roofline in December, and he would say it again to whoever was working with him. He wanted to light the White House someday. He did not really know how a person would even get the chance. He figured it might be a bid you could lose, or a job that went to some national company, and that he would probably never see the inside of it.
Then one day a guy he knew online, another Christmas light installer out west, posted a screenshot of an application he had just submitted. It turned out the White House decorates for Christmas entirely with volunteers, and the First Lady’s team puts out an open call for people who want to help.
Josh read that and thought, there is no way I am not at least going for it.
Applying, with a newborn on the way
The application was not a quick form. It ran several pages. They asked about him personally, about why he wanted to do it, about the kind of experience he had. He wrote about the business and about the years he had spent doing exactly this kind of work.
The timing was its own story. It was Josh and his wife’s tenth anniversary year, and before she ever knew he had applied, Liz had mentioned wanting to go to Washington, D.C. to mark it. So part of what he wrote was that he planned to bring his whole family down and make a trip of it. There was one complication. He and Liz were expecting their fourth child, their second son, due at the start of November. He figured they would have a month-old baby along for the ride and that they would make it work.
Then he submitted it and waited.
The letter
Roughly thirteen thousand to fifteen thousand people applied. About 135 were selected.
Josh watched some of the big names get turned down. Multi-million dollar lighting companies were posting their rejection emails. Josh’s read on his own odds was blunt. If those companies were getting passed over, a local guy from Toledo did not stand a chance.
He found out on October 15th. He remembers the date because he saved it in his phone. The email said he had been selected, pending a background check. He was shaking when he read it. He had not even told most people he applied, because in his own head, it was a long shot he did not want to explain. Now he had to go tell everyone, and half of them did not believe him.
There was one more twist. His son decided to take his time. Instead of arriving in early November, the baby came on November 13th. Josh was scheduled to leave for Washington on the 23rd. That made his newborn ten days old when he left. The family trip they had imagined was off the table for now, so Liz stayed home and held down the fort with all the kids, and Josh went on his own.
The volunteer effort, by the numbers:
- More than 13,000 people applied
- About 135 were selected
- Over 50 Christmas trees decorated across the residence
- Josh was the only professional Christmas light installer in the group, and the only volunteer there on active duty
Two days that started in a warehouse
The work did not begin at the White House. It began in a large warehouse, where the volunteers spent the first day moving boxes, unpacking, and prepping everything so the finish work could happen cleanly on site. Nobody wants tags and glitter ending up on the White House carpet. The warehouse itself was a piece of history. Decorations were stored there going back decades, through administration after administration. The First Lady is very hands-on with the design, with a specific vision for each room, so some pieces get bought new while a lot of the bulbs, ribbon, and bows get repurposed from years past into whatever the new look calls for. This year that vision carried the theme Home Is Where the Heart Is.
On that first morning, the one hundred and thirty five volunteers were sorted into groups, each led by someone who carried the First Lady’s vision and worked closely with her design team. Most of the volunteers were interior decorators and florists. That detail is going to matter in a second.
The Blue Room and the Gold Star tree
Josh’s group drew the Blue Room. If you have ever seen a photo of the official White House Christmas Tree, that is the one in the Blue Room. This year it was an eighteen foot concolor fir that runs nearly floor to ceiling.
It is also the Gold Star tree, the one that honors military families who have lost a loved one in service. Josh’s group included Gold Star mothers and Gold Star children, along with several veterans. Out of all one hundred and thirty five volunteers, Josh was the only person there on active duty. He was also, as far as he could tell, the only professional Christmas light installer in the entire group.
Walking in
The volunteers did not enter through the visitor center. They came up through Secret Service and walked the roadway toward the residence, the West Wing and the Oval Office off to one side, the South Portico straight ahead. Josh spent the walk trying to convince himself it was real.
Breakfast and lunch were both served at the White House. So most mornings started with Josh eating eggs and oatmeal made by some of the best chefs in the country, in a room hung with portraits of past presidents, looking up at Abraham Lincoln over the fireplace. He said the same thought hit him five or six times a day. I am in the White House right now. It never fully wore off.
The Oval Office, after hours
By the end of that week, the trees were taking longer to light than anyone planned, and people who could actually wrap a tree were in short supply. Josh kept finding more trees that needed him. He went from the Blue Room to the West Wing to the Vice President’s office, and then to the room he had quietly been hoping for the whole time. The Oval Office.
That room is treated with more care than any other, so other groups were kept out until the very end. Josh and the lead he was paired with worked it themselves. When five o’clock came and the volunteers were sent home for the day, the lead asked if Josh could stay to help finish, and they kept going until about half past nine at night. While they worked, they watched Marine One run practice landings out on the lawn, since the President and First Lady were away for Thanksgiving.
There was one more room Josh got to that most volunteers never would. Because he is active duty and holds a security clearance, he was cleared to go down and decorate the tree in the Situation Room. Blue Room, West Wing, Vice President’s office, Oval Office, Situation Room. One after another, each one somehow topping the last.
After that he became what he jokingly called the rehab guy, moving from tree to tree to make sure every branch was lit before the ornaments went on. He also made friends with the electricians, the crew that keeps everything running after the volunteers leave. He helped them spot the places where too many light strings were stacked into one outlet, the kind of overload that can cause a short. Small thing. Very on brand for a guy who does this for a living.
The reveal
Everything came together on the final Sunday night, right before the First Lady’s walkthrough. The volunteers did the last touches, cleaned up, and packed the rest away. The next morning there was a brunch to thank them. The Marine Corps band played Christmas music, an Army chorus sang, and the First Lady came down and gave a speech.
Josh said the whole experience had been go, go, go, so it was really that morning, walking back through the main doors to a band playing and every room finally lit, that it landed. This is what we did.
The finished rooms later became the centerpiece of HGTV’s White House Christmas special, the one that follows hundreds of volunteers decorating the residence in about 72 hours. Josh was one of them.
Bringing the family back
The trip had started with a plan to bring everyone, and it ended close to that after all. Through friendships he made with the staff and electricians, Josh was able to get his family back to Washington before Christmas for a walkthrough. He surprised Liz and the kids, and he brought his mom and dad too, since they had helped Liz hold everything together while he was gone. His kids got to stand inside the White House and see the trees their dad had lit. He calls that the best part of the whole thing, ahead of even the Oval Office.
There was a final surprise waiting at home. Not long after Christmas, a signed letter arrived from the President, congratulating Josh and Liz on the birth of their son. It hangs in the baby’s room now.
The part that actually matters for your home
Here is why this story lives on the Christmas Lights 419 website and not just in Josh’s phone.
Out of thousands of applicants and a room full of professional decorators, the thing that set Josh apart was not flash. It was that he would wrap every single branch, by hand, and care whether it was done right. The same instinct that made him useful in the Blue Room is the one that shows up when his crew is on your roofline in December. Warm, even light. Nothing skipped because no one would notice. A job done the way he would want it done on his own house.
If you want your home lit with that kind of care this season, our Toledo Christmas light installation team handles design, installation, takedown, and storage so you never touch a ladder. Reach out for a quote and we will take it from there.