Holiday World and Santa Claus Indiana’s own Pat Koch has a secret. Not only is she one of the founders of the amusement park town, but she is also the only one of Santa’s elves that met President John F. Kennedy. In 1962, Bill and Pat Koch were at the White House when JFK signed legislation creating the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial in nearby Lincoln City, Indiana.
On the day they met John Kennedy at the White House “Bill and I were in Florida, I just had a new baby and he said, ‘fly on up with me and we’ll see how far you can get.’ We pulled up to the gate and drove right on through there but they waved us on in and didn’t check our names or anything. We went in and walked around the Cabinet room, I thought sure someone was going to come in and run me out. His secretary Evelyn Lincoln came in and took me right into the Oval Office with the rest of them. I stood off in the corner and watched President Kennedy sign the bill with all those Congressman and Senators present.”
Pat continued, “and he did, as Presidents have always done, signed each letter of his name with a different pen and then handed them around. When he finished President Kennedy said ‘well I have one pen left’ and someone said to give it to Mrs. Koch. He got up from his chair walked over to me and handed me that pen, he was gorgeous. After he looked at me, everything he said about him and women, was true.” After our laughter died down, Pat said, “Bill and I were the last ones to leave and someone came up to us and asked us if we would like a tour of the White House. So I was lucky enough to get a private tour of the White House. We were in the Lincoln room. How about that?”
Eventually, the town honored Pat’s father-in-law Louis J. Koch by naming a street after him in town. Last year, HGTV came through and re-did two houses. Afterwards, they surprised Mrs. Koch by naming a street after her too, which I feel sure her road-loving husband would appreciate. Pat’s dream is to expand her museum to include all of the objects she has accumulated over the years and at age 90 1/2, she thinks she can get it done. “When I first thought of this, I thought I would have to raise a million dollars to get it done, now I think that number has doubled. Part of the problem is my last name is Koch and everybody thinks I’m extremely wealthy and so they don’t want to help me. I give away money all the time because I think that’s what makes life worthwhile. You see, I’m 90 1/2 and I must live long enough to build this museum so I’m eating blueberries, bananas, turkey, and all kinds of good stuff and limiting myself to just one vodka tonic,” she said with a giggle.
Pat led our little group on a tour of the original Santa Claus post office and explained the history of the building and pointed out two rows of old-fashioned school desks that dominate the foyer of the building. “Of course, these are not original to the post office but they are old and are perfect for the children to sit and write their letters to Santa. The templates are under the cubbies along with the pencils. My dad wrote a lot of letters in those early years. His sentence structure was incorrect and his spelling was bad but his thoughts were always great. We have young people that come in to help us every year and they don’t know how to address an envelope, let alone how to write in cursive. The season starts on May 14th. Last year we spent $18,000 on postage, everything is donated.”
Pat opened a book and read some of those letters her father used to receive in the 1930s, all of which start out with “Dear Santa.” As you might expect, the content ranges from comedy to tragedy, often in the same letter. From Rose age 12: “We are poor and got no money for toys or candy. Please come to our house. Jimmy ain’t so good so if you want, you can leave him out.” From Catherine age 9: “My dad was a soldier in the world war, he got shot when he was a deputy sheriff by gangsters after he came back.” Today, the kids write their letters and then drop them into the slot and ring the bell. “That’s the signal for the elves in the back to gather the letters and go to work.”
Behind the wall of the post office is the space where the elves get to work. “We have four templates, all fashioned after the letters my dad wrote. We get letters from all over the world and we read every one of them and each child gets a letter from Santa.” Pat explained. “Often the kids enclose a cutout and we save all of those and put them on a tree. We personalize every letter and add a note to the bottom. If the kid writes ‘I hate my sister’ or something like that, we answer them. It’s fun, we laugh and we cry. Sometimes we get letters from jail, from people going through a divorce, or from people who are dying asking for something for their kids and we always try and do what we can.” Pat, the “Chief Elf,” saves the letters that mean the most and shreds the rest.
When I asked how Covid affected the flow of letters, Pat says, “We got a lot more letters. We moved out of this room because we couldn’t distance, to the second floor of the American Legion.” Pat’s dad, Santa Jim Yellig, was the driving force behind the Legion so it seemed like home to Pat and her elves. “My dad started that Legion and he was the first Commander. We gave them a nice donation for letting us answer letters over there, it was fun but not as much fun as answering letters here.” Pat stated. “We answer the letters in red ink. I have very strict rules, they all have to be very uniform.”
Pat reached down and grabs a few cards as examples, “These are from Russia,” she stated. “We get a huge amount of Russian letters. It’s amazing to me how many letters we get from Russia.” Later on in the interview, Pat revealed that of her 13 grandchildren, two of them were adopted from Russia. “We did 23,000 letters last year. My daughter and granddaughters are doing them now. One granddaughter ‘elf’ is studying chemical engineering at Stanford and helps write letters when she comes home.” Proving that, just as Pat said several times during our three-hour visit, “Those Kochs are smart.”
Pat said they get many of the same people each year, Spencer County historian Daryl Lovell among them, and she said, “They are all volunteers. Some come once a week, some a couple times a week, and some every day. Teachers come after school, banks and churches send their employees. I stay all the time, I will happily do twelve hours a day. I love it. We’re just like a family. A family of Santa’s elves.” Together with the non-profit Santa’s Elves, Inc., Pat Koch keeps a number of irons in the fire constantly glowing red hot. Not only does she coordinate the Santa’s Elves volunteer service project and oversee the thousands of letters sent and received at the Santa Claus post office, she is meticulously documenting the thousands of objects, photos, letters, and documents from the pages of the town’s (and the park’s) history and she also spearheaded the construction of St. Nicholas Catholic Church in Santa Claus.
Santa Claus himself helps Pat in her task of protecting, documenting, and storing the objects not yet on display. Pat delighted in taking us back to the storeroom to show us the workplace. “Alan, pick up one of those boxes, any box,” Pat gleefully asked. When I do, we open it together and it is filled to the brim with ancient magical model railroad cars and engines, all collected by Mr. Louie a century ago. In another drawer are the albums of documents, and another holds the original post office charter, the original town map, and a Depression Era photo of a rather grumpy looking woman. “That’s the first postmaster’s wife,” Pat said. “She didn’t like to have her photo taken.”
We left the post office and walked a short distance to the church. As soon as we enter the ancient structure, it immediately becomes clear that Pat Koch is in her milieu. Santa Claus (Yes, it really was Santa) prepared the church for our visit by arranging for background music featuring an angelic choir to be playing softly while we talked. “Everything in here is original. It was sitting in the woods falling apart. The windows were broken, the walls were beginning to cave in.” Luckily, Pat saved the church in the nick of time. Two of the original stained glass windows remained unbroken, the baptismal font was saved, a minor miracle since it sat outside for years and the old pot-bellied stove was intact but needed rebuilding.
Pat explained that saving the church was a high priority. “All my children were confirmed here and I just hated to see it going to ruin.” She walked to the front of the church, placed her hand on the first pew, and said that during services, “The Koch family sat here,” then placed her hand on the old pump organ and stated, “Will (Koch) played the organ and I sang.” She waved her hand towards the other pews nearby and named the families that occupied them. “We all knew where we sat. These were the early settlers in Christmas Lake that were Catholic. We formed a community, it was like the early Christians,” she said with a laugh.
“We get a storyteller at Christmas and she does a lovely job, she stands there (gesturing to the pulpit) and she tells the history of the place. And we fill this tiny little church. But we have never charged anyone for anything here, it is always donations.” Many of the surviving church windows are the original wavy glass. Daryl Lovell, who has assisted in many of the Christmas programs at the old church over the years stated, “You know what’s neat at Christmas, they decorate this all up with garland, and everything and the lanterns were lit and you could sit back here and take a picture of that Santa Claus statue up on the hill and it’s cool.” To which Pat added, “It’s magic.”
Here, after two hours of cheerleading for the town of Santa Claus that could tempt anyone to pull up stakes and move there themselves, I coaxed the very humble Pat Koch into talking about herself. “I got a Master’s in pastoral ministry from Loyola University New Orleans when I was seventy. I always wanted to be a doctor but I knew I had to get a Master’s first. I got an honorary Doctorate, I didn’t get a real doctorate, but I did get my Master’s. I was having grade four cancer, colon cancer, while I was getting that Master’s degree. I was so sick, you know chemo then was so awful. I was getting chemo and radiation at the same time for five months. It burned my back, I was just a skeleton with a big belly and I thought I was going to die. I asked the wonderful Benedictine nun that was in charge of our parish, Sister Mary Terrence, why do you think I was spared? All the women that died who have children, all the babies who have died, and she was so wonderful, and I never forgot, she said ‘so you can keep doing what you’ve always done,’ isn’t that wonderful? Just the right thing to say; the right thing, and you never forget it.”
Pat continued, “I believe real firmly, that if we are open to grace, if you’re just open, then things will work. I think humility is probably the biggest virtue in the world, I think it’s the most important because, do you know how many people want to be so important? They don’t realize that it’s not about us.” At this point, this correspondent shared a story that ranks high in Hunter family lore to this day. When my children were little we took them to Holiday World and spent the day riding rides and playing in the water park. My child Addison had managed to get soaking wet in his street clothes and we removed his shoes and socks as I carried them to the car. They dropped one of their wet socks and before I could turn around and pick it up, Pat Koch was there with that dirty wet sock in her hand, handing it back to us. My children were starstruck and immediately said, “Mom, Dad, that’s the woman from the TV commercials, she just picked up my sock.” They could not believe it.
Hearing this Pat laughed that now-familiar laugh and said, “Well, they should believe it, that’s the thing. And now it’s almost funny because I’m just me, I’m just Patty from Mariah Hill. Always will be. Yesterday I took my sister-in-law to the doctor. Now with Covid protocol, they have to know who brought you, so the nurse, who was sitting outside of the building, asked her and she said Pat Koch — K-O-C-H — and the nurse said THE Pat Koch? And then she wanted a picture.” And then Pat Koch laughed. Not just any laugh, but a laugh accompanied by a smile that lit up the walls of that ancient little church. If ever there was a countenance to inspire hope and inspiration in this world, Pat Koch has it.
After three hours, I closed the interview with a pre-planned question for Mrs. Koch. “Do you still believe in Santa Claus?” She immediately answered, “Oh absolutely, absolutely.” She then turned the table on our little trio and literally took us to church where the question of Santa Claus lives, “Now let me ask you all a question. Do you believe in the wind?” We collectively answered, “Yes.” Pat continued, “Do you feel the wind? Yes. Do you see it? No. Is it always there? No. So Santa Claus is kind of like the wind. It touches you, creates some feeling, and that’s a spirit. Santa Claus is spirit and Santa Claus will live forever.”
Al Hunter is the author of the “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Haunted Irvington” and “Indiana National Road” book series. His newest books are “Bumps in the Night. Stories from the Weekly View,” “Irvington Haunts. The Tour Guide,” and “The Mystery of the H.H. Holmes Collection.” Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
