Speaker 1: When my kid was five years old from Memphis, back
Speaker 1: when one of them was five. If they wrote a
Speaker 1: letter to Santa Claus and put a stamp on it,
Speaker 1: does it just get to.
Speaker 2: You, guys? Somehow does the Post office honor that tradition?
Speaker 2: How does it work? That's how it works, no kidding.
Speaker 3: It works if it says a guy in the big
Speaker 3: red suit. If it says North Pole, you know it's
Speaker 3: that Christmas season. If we could be that way all
Speaker 3: year long, wouldn't it be wonderful? I mean, everybody along
Speaker 3: the way will add an address, will add PO Box one,
Speaker 3: Santa Claus, Indiana. This past season we called from Thanksgiving
Speaker 3: to Christmas over twenty three thousand letters.
Speaker 1: We'll see three thousand letters that have to be answered.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, and some years it's thirty thousand.
Speaker 1: Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Cortney.
Speaker 1: I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, I'm a father,
Speaker 1: I'm an entrepreneur, and I've been a football coach an
Speaker 1: inner city Memphis. And the last part unintentionally led to
Speaker 1: an oscar for the film about our team. It's called Undefeated. Guys,
Speaker 1: I believe our country's problems will never be solved by
Speaker 1: a bunch of fancy people in nice suits talking big
Speaker 1: words that nobody understands on CNN and Fox, but rather
Speaker 1: by an army of normal folks us just you and
Speaker 1: me deciding hey, I can help. That's what Pat Cook,
Speaker 1: the voice we just heard, has done. Pat is the
Speaker 1: chief Elf, believe it or not, of Santa Claus, Indiana,
Speaker 1: a town that somehow got that name and somehow gets
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of letters addressed to Santa Claus every
Speaker 1: single year, and Pat and her army of elves have
Speaker 1: carried on a legacy of responding to each of those
Speaker 1: letters every Christmas. I cannot wait for you to meet Pat.
Speaker 1: Right after these brief messages from our general sponsors, today's
Speaker 1: episode is really going to be fun. It is after
Speaker 1: having conversations about some really deep subject matter with addiction
Speaker 1: and unwed mothers and tattoo removal and a lot of heavy,
Speaker 1: heavy stuff we've talked about over the last few weeks.
Speaker 2: I'm really looking forward to our chat today.
Speaker 1: We're talking with miss Pat Cook from Santa Claus, Indiana
Speaker 1: hat store. He goes way back and it's really interesting
Speaker 1: and Pat, I just want to thank you so much
Speaker 1: for joining me today.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3: I'm glad to be here. Love to talk to people,
Speaker 3: love to talk about the town. Really, I'm so in
Speaker 3: love with the town and with the wonderful people who
Speaker 3: bring joy to so many kids.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, my first exposure to Santa Claus, Indiana
Speaker 1: is just a street sign.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 1: I think there's an exit somewhere in Indiana, there's an
Speaker 1: exit on the Interstate that there's a sign that says
Speaker 1: Santa Claus, Indiana.
Speaker 2: If I'm not right, isn't that right? Yes?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I was driving down the Interstate going to
Speaker 1: sell lumber up in Elkhart, Indiana, on the way from
Speaker 1: Memphis on my first trip up there twenty something years ago,
Speaker 1: and I remember passing that sign, and of course I
Speaker 1: giggled to myself, like anybody, my giggles, who would name
Speaker 1: a town in Santa Claus, Indiana?
Speaker 2: And you know, it just it was kind of a
Speaker 2: warm chuckle. And to be speaking with you.
Speaker 1: Now, So first of all, tell me about you, Tell
Speaker 1: me about when you're born, and tell me about you know,
Speaker 1: how you got to Santa Claus, and just give me
Speaker 1: a little background on the pat world.
Speaker 3: Okay, I was born Patricia Anna in a little German
Speaker 3: town called Maria Hilf, which means Mary Help. Very Roman
Speaker 3: Catholic part of the world, very German. Was born August fourteenth,
Speaker 3: nineteen thirty one.
Speaker 2: Nineteen thirty one, you're at least forty.
Speaker 3: Now, I am, yes, a little bit over.
Speaker 2: Nineteen thirty one.
Speaker 1: Pat, you put the year out there, that's I'm sixty nine,
Speaker 1: seventy nine, how old?
Speaker 2: That's ninety I need three or so.
Speaker 3: I'm ninety two and a half.
Speaker 2: Wow, that is amazing. And I'm gonna tell you something.
Speaker 1: You know, an army of normal folks is audio only,
Speaker 1: so people don't get to see you.
Speaker 2: But Pat, you are handling ninety three like a champ.
Speaker 2: You look great. You don't look ninety three. I don't
Speaker 2: know what ninety three is supposed to look like, but
Speaker 2: that's not it.
Speaker 3: Oh that's right. I don't know either. I don't know
Speaker 3: how I'm supposed to look or at so I just
Speaker 3: knew me. No, I'm very fortunate. My mother was a beautiful,
Speaker 3: lovely woman who lived to be ninety eight, had beautiful
Speaker 3: white hair. Grew up there and to the Benedictine's sisters
Speaker 3: from Ferdinand Indiana, who have a great beautiful monastery there
Speaker 3: only about fifteen miles away where the teachers in the
Speaker 3: grade school grades one to eight. So grades one to
Speaker 3: four we're in one room. In grades five to eight
Speaker 3: we're in another room. And we got an absolutely wonderful education.
Speaker 3: We learned to read, write and spell, we learned to pray,
Speaker 3: We learned and learned to spinging, singing German and Latin.
Speaker 3: And I'm very grateful, grateful for that wonderful education. How
Speaker 3: to write cursive, imagine that. And then I went to
Speaker 3: Dale High School, which was also about ten miles away,
Speaker 3: and it was actually just a it was not a
Speaker 3: Catholic high school. I met some other people from other
Speaker 3: religions and other walks of life, small Towndale, great basketball team.
Speaker 3: Loved high school, loved every bit of it. Cheerleader on
Speaker 3: the student council, all that stuff, got involved, had bunches
Speaker 3: of meetings, had a lot of fun. Loved my high
Speaker 3: school years. My mother and father they sort of let
Speaker 3: I only had one brother and he was three years
Speaker 3: older than me, so he graduated from high school and
Speaker 3: joined the navy and left home. My dad had It's
Speaker 3: hard for me to tell this whole story. But my dad,
Speaker 3: dad had been in the navy for fourteen years and
Speaker 3: had left the navy early because he had had that
Speaker 3: he and my mother had had my brother, and he
Speaker 3: went back to Mura Hill and saw the beauty of
Speaker 3: a small town and decided to leave the navy and
Speaker 3: come back to Mariah Hill. And that's what he did
Speaker 3: in nineteen thirty So I was born. Then the year
Speaker 3: later he had had a roadhouse in Chicago during Prohibition. Wonderful,
Speaker 3: great stories they told about getting their beer cakes at night,
Speaker 3: in the dark of night with men with guns, and well,
Speaker 3: I had a childhood of being in My father built
Speaker 3: the first tavern that they built, called the Diamond Tavern.
Speaker 3: I have pictures of myself in front of that. I
Speaker 3: don't know if that burned or I don't know if
Speaker 3: he if they just demolished it or what. But then
Speaker 3: he built the chateau because he had been in France
Speaker 3: during World War One and he loved the chateaus. It
Speaker 3: was a beautiful brick structure. It looked like a chateau.
Speaker 3: So I grew up in a bar, pool room, and
Speaker 3: dance hall, and that was a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: I bet it was a lot of fun. It was
Speaker 2: a lot of fun.
Speaker 3: I learned to play pool at a very young age.
Speaker 3: My mother took me to tap dancing lessons. I learned
Speaker 3: tap dance, so in the dance part of the room
Speaker 3: of the chateau, I would dance, so people would throw
Speaker 3: quarters and nickels at me. So I was an entrepreneur
Speaker 3: from the very beginning. And of course I lived through
Speaker 3: World War Two. I was born in thirty one, so
Speaker 3: you're talking forty one, forty seven, and forty six. Saw
Speaker 3: the soldiers coming home, sitting at the bar having a
Speaker 3: beer and then seeing a flag in the window meaning
Speaker 3: a gold star mother, and we lost a lot of
Speaker 3: young men, a lot of young men. So I grew
Speaker 3: up during that. But that was my high school days.
Speaker 3: So except for being aware of rationing gas, rushing sugar,
Speaker 3: rationing coffee, we had. My father then went to work
Speaker 3: in Evansville as a shipyard supervisor because in Evansville, Indiana,
Speaker 3: they made the LSTs on the Ohio River. You know
Speaker 3: what the LSTs were?
Speaker 2: First? They were?
Speaker 3: What my first question.
Speaker 2: To you LST. I don't tell me.
Speaker 1: I really want to guess LST were I No, I
Speaker 1: don't know it doesn't sound like an overly large boat,
Speaker 1: so maybe recon boats.
Speaker 3: LST stands for landing ships tanks really, and they were
Speaker 3: very large. They were made so that they had a
Speaker 3: huge There is one still in Evansville that's on display
Speaker 3: in his history Oracle LST. And my father accompanied them
Speaker 3: to New Orleans and handed them over to the navy.
Speaker 1: Are they the boats with the with the big thing
Speaker 1: that flops down so the troops get in them, they
Speaker 1: go to an assaulted beach, the front flops down and
Speaker 1: everybody runs off the front office.
Speaker 3: They were at Normandy. They were at Normandy. They were
Speaker 3: at Evil Regima.
Speaker 1: Yes, everybody that's watched the World War two movie has
Speaker 1: seen those. And your father overseed the manufacturing, oversaw the manufacture.
Speaker 2: Of those, and my mother Christen, no kidding, that is wow?
Speaker 3: What is Yes? So the war came and Dad was
Speaker 3: in Evansville, and so my brother, my mother and I
Speaker 3: were running the chateau and we had to close. I
Speaker 3: think it was ten o'clock. It had to be dark,
Speaker 3: I know that. But so I spent more time in
Speaker 3: the after school, I'd be in the chateau and it
Speaker 3: was an interesting, interesting way to start your life. Then
Speaker 3: I went to Dale High School, and somehow or other,
Speaker 3: the sisters had put into my being a love for education,
Speaker 3: a love for learning. I love to read, I love
Speaker 3: to spell, I love to do English. Didn't like math
Speaker 3: very much, but so I really wanted an education after
Speaker 3: high school. Now that I was a girl, you know,
Speaker 3: in nineteen forty eight, I graduated from high school at
Speaker 3: the age of sixteen. Because three of us either did
Speaker 3: grades two and three at one year, or we skipped.
Speaker 3: We don't know. The other girl has passed away. The
Speaker 3: other boy is a priest in a nursing home and
Speaker 3: he doesn't know either. But we were all three good readers,
Speaker 3: good spellers. I don't think we learned much math. But anyway,
Speaker 3: I graduated of sixteen, and I thought I want to
Speaker 3: go to college. My mom and dad had both had
Speaker 3: six grade educations, really weren't very interested in that. So
Speaker 3: I worked for a year to be a little older
Speaker 3: to be able to apply to a nursing school. And
Speaker 3: I tell this story to young women and boys too.
Speaker 3: But for some strange reason, first I went into the
Speaker 3: principal's office and said I'd like to go to college
Speaker 3: because four boys in our class had gone to college.
Speaker 3: No girls, are you? They went to Nana University and
Speaker 3: I said I'd like to go to college, and my
Speaker 3: wonderful principal, who was a good man, said to me,
Speaker 3: why would a girl want to go to college. That
Speaker 3: was the end of my quest for college. And I
Speaker 3: really didn't think I had a chance, but I wanted
Speaker 3: an education. So I went to Dale, got on the
Speaker 3: greyhound bus by myself, which I have no idea how
Speaker 3: I did that, went to Evansville, Indiana where the Sister
Speaker 3: Daughters of Charity. I don't know, Bill, if you know,
Speaker 3: they're the ones with the big wings, with the find.
Speaker 2: The big hats, big hats.
Speaker 3: They were in charge of that hospital. And I wrote
Speaker 3: myself to nursing school. That was my beginning to I
Speaker 3: guess my life.
Speaker 1: And now a few messages from our general sponsors. But first,
Speaker 1: if an army of normal folks has impacted you or
Speaker 1: inspired you to take action, I really want to hear
Speaker 1: about it. Write me anytime at Bill at normalfolks dot
Speaker 1: us and I'll respond.
Speaker 2: I want to hear about it. We'll be right back.
Speaker 3: The first year of nurses training made a lot of friends,
Speaker 3: had a lot of fun, Big town of Evansville, INDWNA,
Speaker 3: which is on the Ohio River, boating out to Duck Island,
Speaker 3: doing a lot of fun stuff, but love nursing. The
Speaker 3: beginning of the second year of nurses training, a very
Speaker 3: charismatic priest named Father I knew his name, I forgot it.
Speaker 3: In a big, long black cassock with a belt of
Speaker 3: leather and sandals came in to give a retreat and
Speaker 3: talk to us about our religion and about you know,
Speaker 3: being Catholic and that sort of thing. And he was
Speaker 3: so wonderful. He talked about serving and giving and not
Speaker 3: thinking of south but thinking of others. And I was hooked.
Speaker 3: And so I went home and told my mom and
Speaker 3: dad that I wanted to be a sister, and I
Speaker 3: wanted to be the kind of sister that ran that
Speaker 3: hospital because they were fun. They weren't boring, they were fun,
Speaker 3: They laughed, they joked, they were very professional, they were
Speaker 3: very smart, they were very educated. And that's what I
Speaker 3: wanted to be. And so I had to wait a
Speaker 3: year till I was almost eighteen, got into the Daughters
Speaker 3: of Charity and was sent to Saint Louis to what
Speaker 3: they called the postulancy, and that was three months and
Speaker 3: then a year in seminary at the mother House, beautiful,
Speaker 3: beautiful building. A year of almost complete silence. We talked
Speaker 3: only at recreation, which was twice a day. Big change
Speaker 3: from this girl that was having a lot of fun
Speaker 3: is training, dating and doing all the things young women do.
Speaker 3: But I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was peaceful. I felt
Speaker 3: like I was becoming someone I wasn't before. So at
Speaker 3: the end of that year and three months, almost a
Speaker 3: year and a half, I received the habit, which was
Speaker 3: the big hat and the beautiful blue outfit, and was
Speaker 3: sent to a hotel, New House of God in New
Speaker 3: Orleans to complete my RN and then was spential Loyola
Speaker 3: University part time to get a bachelor's degree. So I
Speaker 3: spent about five years in New Orleans.
Speaker 2: Loved it.
Speaker 3: Wonderful town, you know, the people loved the sisters. They
Speaker 3: had been in that hospital. They had Charity Hospital, which
Speaker 3: was a very poor hospital that took in very poor people,
Speaker 3: and I did my pediatric experience there. Psychiatric hospital also
Speaker 3: belonged to them, so it was just a wonderful experience.
Speaker 3: But then I had a wonderful the Daughter's to Charity,
Speaker 3: the head of the hospital was called the Sister Servant.
Speaker 3: I think that's an amazing title. Servant. You know, she
Speaker 3: was the servant of the hospital, the servant of the sisters,
Speaker 3: the servant of the patients. And she was such a
Speaker 3: role model to me. I just admired her. She was
Speaker 3: once again, smart, fair, tough, absolutely knew her business, knew
Speaker 3: how to. She said to me one time something I
Speaker 3: never forgot. I'm not running a person at popularity contest,
Speaker 3: I'm running a hospital. And she did that. And so
Speaker 3: at some point after the five years there, I got
Speaker 3: word that I was to go to Saint Louis University
Speaker 3: to get a bachelor's degree in nursing full time. Did
Speaker 3: that full time. Love that, loved it, loved going to school,
Speaker 3: loved stayed at the mother House where there was prayer
Speaker 3: and beautiful chapel. After that mission, which was mean, I
Speaker 3: was sent to Chicago, Saint Joseph's Hospital in Chicago, whole
Speaker 3: different world, whole different world. I was still, you know, eighteen,
Speaker 3: know I was older that I was twenty by that time.
Speaker 3: And that hospital, the Sister Servant was not like the
Speaker 3: one had been in New Orleans. We worked so very hard,
Speaker 3: moving beds empty and garbage, doing laundry. There wasn't as
Speaker 3: much time for fun, if that's the right word. In
Speaker 3: New Orleans, Sister Carlo said, let us go out into
Speaker 3: Carter and buy somebody to look at Christmas lights. We
Speaker 3: went out to lake concentrating and jumped in the water.
Speaker 3: Things that gave us courage again to keep on going.
Speaker 3: But that wasn't the case in Chicago. And one night
Speaker 3: I got a call from somebody, and I know not who.
Speaker 3: I can't remember that like it happened that my father
Speaker 3: had had a heart attack at the American Legion, which
Speaker 3: he founded because he was a veteran in Santa Claus.
Speaker 3: Santa Claus American Legion, and they said my father had
Speaker 3: had a heart attack and they had brought him home.
Speaker 3: My mother was ill, my brother was in the navy,
Speaker 3: and I was never The Daughters of Charity were never
Speaker 3: allowed to come back home after they entered the Order.
Speaker 3: It was a rule that Saint Vincent Paul made because
Speaker 3: he went home to his father and mother one time
Speaker 3: and then he hesitated to go back to his parish,
Speaker 3: so he said, you will not return home ever. So
Speaker 3: I was not ever supposed to go home but I said,
Speaker 3: I've been taking care of all these people in New
Speaker 3: Orleans and in Chicago, and I should be able to
Speaker 3: take care of my mother and father. They were alone.
Speaker 3: My mother wasn't well, and so I did that. I
Speaker 3: left probably one of the hardest things I ever did
Speaker 3: in my life. Really, it was just very difficult. I
Speaker 3: loved the daughters, I loved nursing. It was a great life.
Speaker 1: It is amazing to me that from sixteen to twenty
Speaker 1: you have more life than some people too, back in
Speaker 1: their thirties.
Speaker 3: Came home on the train from Saint Louis to Washington, Indiana.
Speaker 3: It was February and it was sewing like crazy. I
Speaker 3: was wearing a It was I think Squad Valley. You
Speaker 3: remember Squad Valley Olympics, right skiing yep. And I had
Speaker 3: on a cap because we had practically no hair under
Speaker 3: all of that.
Speaker 2: Had to go.
Speaker 3: Find some clothes, didn't have clothes, didn't know what size
Speaker 3: of war, didn't know anything, didn't know about a hamburger,
Speaker 3: didn't know much. But got on that train and my
Speaker 3: mother said, I can't come get you, and Dad come
Speaker 3: catch you. So we're going to send Bill. Bill was
Speaker 3: built Cook Koch his family had a business in Evansville,
Speaker 3: and his father had come to Santa Claus, Indiana after
Speaker 3: he retired with a heart attack, to find out that
Speaker 3: there's nothing in Santa Claus, Indiana for children. And he
Speaker 3: had nine children, and he was a very good grandpa, dad,
Speaker 3: wonderful man, very smart. Cook family is very smart. And
Speaker 3: so he went to Santa Claus, Indiana and said, I
Speaker 3: have to do something. There's to be something here for children.
Speaker 3: So he built a very small theme park called Santa
Speaker 3: claus Land, and it was built for small children. At
Speaker 3: that time, his son, Bill had been in the Navy,
Speaker 3: graduated from the Naval Academy, come back home, started to
Speaker 3: get into the family business in Evansville, decided it wasn't
Speaker 3: for him and asked his father if he could come
Speaker 3: to Santa Claus and take over that little park. And
Speaker 3: his father told me that he didn't think it would
Speaker 3: make anything. It was just going to be a little
Speaker 3: kiddy park. And so he came there in forty seven.
Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure because grandpa started the park in forty six.
Speaker 3: And so the man that my mother sent to pick
Speaker 3: me up at the train station was that Bill.
Speaker 1: Cook, who's who ends up being my husband. So you
Speaker 1: grow up. Your father's a World War two, a World
Speaker 1: War one vat. Then he's building the boats that we
Speaker 1: used to go to Normandy and he would GiMA, you
Speaker 1: want to learn and go to college.
Speaker 2: You end up coming a nun.
Speaker 1: Then you leave being a nun to take care of
Speaker 1: your ailing parents, and you end up in lo and
Speaker 1: behold Santa Claus and end up marrying the guy that
Speaker 1: picks you up to take you to your parents' house.
Speaker 2: What a crazy story.
Speaker 3: So let's we were married forty years. He was sixteen
Speaker 3: years older than me, and well, Natalie sitting here, they're
Speaker 3: very smart. So my kids are really smart because I'm
Speaker 3: married a smart man.
Speaker 1: But I think they have a pretty smart mob too.
Speaker 3: It was a great marriage because if you can't tell,
Speaker 3: I'm the people person. He was the engineer, graduate, Naval Academy,
Speaker 3: numbers guy, planner, dreamer. I was the down to earth
Speaker 3: let's get this work done. We were a great team.
Speaker 2: That's an awesome story. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: So you're in Santa Claus, and Santa Claus the city
Speaker 1: who names the town Santa Claus.
Speaker 2: How did that happen?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I started in a museum, so in
Speaker 3: the museum you have to come see us. There is
Speaker 3: the document eighteen fifty six. There was a postmaster in Fulda,
Speaker 3: and he decided that this little town that my grandmother
Speaker 3: called Santa Fe, Grandma Apollonia always called the town center Fee.
Speaker 3: Now I thought it was she was wrong that in
Speaker 3: my day we didn't correct our grandparents. So she was right.
Speaker 3: It was Santa Fe. And we have a plat map
Speaker 3: of the town of Santa Fe. Very rural, but it
Speaker 3: was laid out in streets. It had creamery, a school,
Speaker 3: a doctor and in residence, and it was a very
Speaker 3: small town. So the guy from full to the postmaster
Speaker 3: thought they need a post office, and he applied to
Speaker 3: Washington City, it says up at the top of the
Speaker 3: document for a post office, and gave the description, and
Speaker 3: whoever looked at that said, choose another name than Santa Fe.
Speaker 3: I don't know if they weren't very smart, or if
Speaker 3: they didn't see the two ease, or what happened. But
Speaker 3: there was already a post office called Santa Fe in Indiana,
Speaker 3: so someone who I can't find out wrote Santa Claus
Speaker 3: at the bottom of black ink. Were no computers, so
Speaker 3: it's just it said Santa Claus, and that somebody marked
Speaker 3: through that, and somebody wrote seed lick or sad lick
Speaker 3: over here that was crossed through, and then somebody wrote
Speaker 3: Santa Close with an eat, which is not correct. But
Speaker 3: the magic of that whole thing is that the postmaster
Speaker 3: who asks for that town to get a post office
Speaker 3: called Santa Claus was named Nicolaus Fisher.
Speaker 2: You've got to be kidnaped like Saint Nick. Yep, it's
Speaker 2: all that is.
Speaker 1: That is iriny of iriny. And so all this happened
Speaker 1: in the mid eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 3: Yes, eighteen fifty six, right, Natalik again unbelievable.
Speaker 1: So now because of the United States Postal Service, this
Speaker 1: little town in Indiana, Santa Fee becomes Santa Claus so
Speaker 1: they can get a post office.
Speaker 2: But later when your dad's their letters start arriving.
Speaker 3: We are told that letters were arriving in nineteen fourteen,
Speaker 3: but we can't find any document about that. But we
Speaker 3: do have a history of the line of postmasters, and
Speaker 3: we do have the original post office building, which was
Speaker 3: a log building, and I have that moved on the
Speaker 3: grounds of the museum. It is there, very small log
Speaker 3: covered over now the logs covered over. But it was
Speaker 3: a very small building with a fireplace and no bathroom,
Speaker 3: so I'm sure there was an outhouse, probably a spring,
Speaker 3: I don't know, but that's how they lived. So yes,
Speaker 3: then Dad when he came home in thirty and built
Speaker 3: the Diamond Tavern and then the chateau. You know, he
Speaker 3: was very interested in the town and he would go
Speaker 3: visit the postmaster at that time Martin James Martin. A
Speaker 3: lot of people from that area were from Alsis, Lorraine,
Speaker 3: which was sometimes under the fringe, sometimes under the German,
Speaker 3: so they were actually Marten, but it got changed to
Speaker 3: Martin in the United States. And my dad saw how
Speaker 3: many letters they were getting that were from children to
Speaker 3: the town of Santa Claus, and with his love for
Speaker 3: now didn't put in the peace of why my dad
Speaker 3: really got interested in helping kids and being Santa Claus.
Speaker 3: When he was in the Navy and he was nineteen
Speaker 3: years old, he was on a ship called the USS
Speaker 3: New York in Brooklyn Navy Yard and they decided to
Speaker 3: have a Christmas party for children, they called them disadvantaged children,
Speaker 3: and they were preparing for the party and somebody in
Speaker 3: command said, we need a Santa Claus. What will we do?
Speaker 3: Somebody else said, there's a guy down in the engine
Speaker 3: room that says he's from Santa Claus, Indiana. Why don't
Speaker 3: we ask him? That was my dad.
Speaker 2: That's hilarious, isn't it.
Speaker 3: And I have the picture of him on board ship
Speaker 3: in the worst outfit you ever in the life, the
Speaker 3: worst beard you've ever seen, this artificial beer. But the
Speaker 3: kids all around him just so excited and so happy.
Speaker 3: And he told me, and it's in literature that he
Speaker 3: made a vow to God that if he lived through
Speaker 3: the war, he would be Santa Claus.
Speaker 2: And ends up living in Santa Claus.
Speaker 3: In Maria Hill, but spent most of his time in
Speaker 3: Santa Claus. And that's when he saw the postmaster being
Speaker 3: inundated with letters and said, I have to do something
Speaker 3: to help these. This postmaster is so busy, he can't
Speaker 3: do all of this. So he started picking up letters
Speaker 3: and putting him in his car, taking around to schools,
Speaker 3: to the sisters of Ferdinand. There's an abbey at Saint
Speaker 3: Minrid Typing class Adale High School. Whoever could answer letters?
Speaker 3: God letters, you know, it just became his passion. And
Speaker 3: then he just started being Santa Claus more and more
Speaker 3: and more and being more involved in that with going
Speaker 3: to lead. He was a big legionaire. So he would
Speaker 3: go to legions for Christmas parties and wait. He was
Speaker 3: in parades in New York, Miami. He just flew in
Speaker 3: a helicopter to in Annapolis, Hotoy, and I'll be sho.
Speaker 3: He became famous. Really, he was on so many programs.
Speaker 3: But he was such a veteran. He was such a
Speaker 3: caring person, He was such a a he loved kids,
Speaker 3: and he was Santa Claus then from nineteen thirty one
Speaker 3: until nineteen eighty four when he passed away fifty three years.
Speaker 1: Things are so much different today and handedly I've raised
Speaker 1: for kids, and it seems like with more and more TV,
Speaker 1: more and more social media, and more and more exposure
Speaker 1: kids expectations and wishes and dreams are vastly different today
Speaker 1: when I was only a kid, and I'm sure I
Speaker 1: was vastly different than two generations before me.
Speaker 2: Do you have a sense of what a kid's.
Speaker 1: Letter back in the nineteen thirties and forties to Santa Claus,
Speaker 1: what they asked for?
Speaker 3: Yes, my father saved them. I have them at the museum.
Speaker 1: Amazing, What did they say? Give me a couple of
Speaker 1: examples of your favorite.
Speaker 3: Almost tell you. This letter comes from Catherine, and Catherine
Speaker 3: says that she's writing for her brothers and sisters. She
Speaker 3: asks for gloves for John Mitten's first I can't name
Speaker 3: the children, but it was gloves, underwear. Mitten sucks shoes.
Speaker 3: And then she says, mama's fat, but she doesn't want anything.
Speaker 3: And then she names all the children and they were
Speaker 3: like twelve, eleven, ten, nine, eight, and she says, and
Speaker 3: the others are dead.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: And she says, I'm writing this for them, and so
Speaker 3: if you could bring them something, I would be so happy.
Speaker 3: And that letter is in a book that I have
Speaker 3: co authored that's Letters to Santa from nineteen thirty on.
Speaker 3: They're written on all kinds of paper. They're all like that,
Speaker 3: asking just for the things they need, food, clothing. And
Speaker 3: then it actually when you see the letters, it's almost
Speaker 3: history because you can see how it changed eventually. Now
Speaker 3: it's computers.
Speaker 1: Well, And I wonder when you think about that context
Speaker 1: and people today that say they're broke or they're or
Speaker 1: they really have they really are losing sight of what
Speaker 1: people only a couple of generations back really suffered.
Speaker 2: In our country.
Speaker 3: Yes, but I think some people today are suffering like
Speaker 3: that because they don't have the means that they would
Speaker 3: like to have. My grandmother who stayed with when we
Speaker 3: my moment Dad would be at the chateau, she spoke
Speaker 3: German and she would walk out in the garden with
Speaker 3: third night in the nineteen forties and she would say,
Speaker 3: as he's new molchendo. That translates not well to it
Speaker 3: is no longer nice here. So Grandma, who at that
Speaker 3: time probably was in her sixties, thought it wasn't nice
Speaker 3: in the forties. And I think that's that's culture, or
Speaker 3: that's just the way it is. Things changed, and I
Speaker 3: don't like that much change. I know that, he said. Yesterday, No,
Speaker 3: last night, I was at a book club and this
Speaker 3: woman said children have no respect these days. And I
Speaker 3: stopped and I said, there are some children who don't
Speaker 3: have respect. But two weeks ago, I was at the
Speaker 3: local high school, lucky to be there when the sophomore
Speaker 3: girls from the two high schools in our county, South
Speaker 3: Spencer and North Spencer came together in a wonderful program
Speaker 3: called Aspire, and it was done by the Chamber of
Speaker 3: Commerce and some other organizations that they would bring in
Speaker 3: professional women to talk to these young women in sophomore
Speaker 3: classes in our high schools to give them an idea
Speaker 3: of what they could do, that they can do things,
Speaker 3: that they can get an education. And those young peop
Speaker 3: this was a whole high school gym full of young women.
Speaker 3: We're so respectful. So they listened, they took part, and
Speaker 3: they moved around from table to table to talk to
Speaker 3: a doctor, to a chiropractor, to a hairdresser, to a mother,
Speaker 3: to a chef, all these different people so they'd get
Speaker 3: an idea of what they might want to be. While
Speaker 3: I talked to some children, there was one who wants
Speaker 3: to join the FBI, there was one who wants to
Speaker 3: be an engineer. There's one who wanted to be a mother.
Speaker 3: And those young people, there are still those young people
Speaker 3: in the world, and we just hear about the bad ones.
Speaker 2: I love that perspective.
Speaker 1: And that concludes part one of my conversation with Pat Cook,
Speaker 1: and you don't want to miss part two that's now
Speaker 1: available to listen to as the Chief Elf will warm
Speaker 1: your heart even more. Together, guys, we can change the country,
Speaker 1: but it starts with you. I'll see in part two