Description of the video:

People still call it Santa Claus Land. Oh, we got criticized. Oh, that's terrible. They can't change. And for a long time, we had both words. We'd have Holiday World Santa Claus Land, and we have a sign down there. They were out on the highways. But it wasn't easy. But then we built that first roller coaster. It all just evolved and worked very hard, Michelle. And when you talk about leadership, which maybe you'll get to that, I never thought about it as leadership.
I always thought about it as giving, as contributing, as being an inspiration, or showing how important it is to learn to work, and to be responsible, and to be dependable. And I think my greatest joy was having young kids at Santa Cos Land and Holiday World, because some of them have learned a lot
at home especially if they've been from farms they learn a little more nowadays particularly but when I was there and if I mean I just loved it and as I think about it I organized the cleaning crew everybody had their own broom and dustpan so they were responsible for it it got put on a hook at night that had your name you had your own bottle of what you spray with you had your own paper towels, and you were there on time, you were assigned to a place to be. I walked around with a broom and dustpan all the time. And one of the things I used to give talks for hospitality, which comes from the word hospitalitas, which comes from hospitals and hospice, and it means caring and taking care of. And so I always said to the young people, you don't work for me. We work together. We're a team. And then the other thing is so important, I think, is to respect even a young person that you might think is brash or irresponsible or whatever. If you respect them and take an interest, you can win them, and they will care and they will do and my greatest joy now is that those young people are still coming up to me today and I just I it's amazing well I see Mrs. Cook you told us to say yes ma'am and yes sir I still do it today because you said it and you taught us to look people in the eyes and shake hands and I still do it and one woman that I just knew had potential and she came to my Sachem Award that I got and she told the story about she was 14 or 15, her dad was verbally abusive and that I took her, I really did, I saw she had potential. You can tell, you just, women are good at that and she was getting, the father and she told it in public but she just, she needed support she needed somebody to believe in her She started dating a guy, and I said, okay, if you get pregnant, I'm finished. You just have to be responsible. You're at a good job. You can help yourself now. None of that. Well, they got divorced because she found out it was the wrong person. But again, I said, do you think you could go to college? She did. I said, I will help you. I did. And she got a bachelor's degree. She's very, very, very
successful now. And she always tells people about that. Because I don't know if she would have made it. It was a bad, bad situation. But she learned a lot. She was HR for us for a while. And then somehow she got into real estate. And she was just so successful. But those stories, that's why you do it. I'm not going to be here forever. Whatever. Even with this, Kathleen is wonderful. She's just so good. And do you mean to be a fan here? Yes, I started it.

I had this idea that history should be remembered, and it should be remembered right, and it should be documented, and we should show why it's
history and all that, and we should talk about that whole process. But she's the best. and she's a very, she's a self -starter. She thinks
of things to do. I don't, I don't, I just, Kathleen can go because I won't be here and she may be, my daughter is very interested but right now she's gone with her, she still has kids, haven't been married, haven't had any grandkids, there's just still a lot ahead for her and I have to rely, you have, what I felt like was I had to teach them so I wasn't necessary anymore. Anything I belonged to or did, I always felt that way. I started a thing in the diocese, another woman and I, in the diocese of Evansville, and I was real active. The diocese is a unit in the Catholic Church with a bishop. And a woman in Kentucky said, I do a wisdom program, and it's for senior citizens because they don't get enough attention. Some parishes have clubs, but not everybody. So Bill and I, he went with me. We went over there, and we went to one of their meetings. It was so much fun, and I saw all these senior citizens, and it's free. Everything's free. They come in, they sign, they get a meal, they get entertainment, they do exercise, they have speakers, and it's like 9 to 3. They get tired after 3 o'clock. And I thought, that's a great idea. So Donna and I said, let's start this in Evansville. Well, we did. And she said, well, you have to go to the bishop and tell him, Bishop Gettelfinger, you have to get him to approve. So she sent me to the bishop. So I went to the bishop, told him, he said, well, you have to talk to the presbyterate, which is all the priests
when they come for a meeting. So I had
to talk to all them. and he said and you
have to you have to let them know they don't
won't have any extra work so we took it
over and they bought it and now we have a
meeting in Evansville one in Jasper and one
in Vincennes and they get hundreds and it's
a beautiful day and now I used to MCM I
used to organize with Lent with Donna she's
in a home now but I don't have to do much
and that's the way it should be because people
are doing it because it's a good thing
and it's always a woman mostly once there's
been a man in Vincennes who's been great
but it's continuing so I think one of the
big things in leadership is to know you do
it and you risk something not everything
my husband used to say I told my kids he
said I told the kids don't think everything
I tried that was successful No, I tried
things that didn't work. But try, just
give it a try. So the same way with
lots of things. And so that's one thing
that has been very successful. And I
just got a call from Vincennes. We're having
it in October. Will you be there and will
you speak? And I would say very short, I'm
not supposed to be the thing of the day. They
get their speakers. But just tell a
little history and how glad I am to be. And
there are 100-year-old people there now,
which never used to be. So I don't know why
I'm telling that story, except that I think
I have, when you talk about leadership, I
think in the younger years, I was more into
the form of leadership, like making
procedures and that sort of thing.
And now I'm more into the spirit
of leadership, helping people
become and helping things become, but
then having other people, and you
need other people. When I got that of
Sachem, I think it is, I said, I didn't
do this by myself. You don't do
anything by yourself. I don't like numbers.
I have to have men or people or
whoever likes numbers make the budget or
do what they're going to do, and you have
to have others. And like here, we have such great volunteers. They're just
wonderful, and they have talent
I don't have. And they do
things I can't do, especially now
being older. So you need to
form, relationships are the biggest
part I think of leadership,
relationships and all the rest of it. My big mantra when I
used to give it in talks, I wanted the people
that worked with me, I I needed to be what
I wanted them to be, and I needed to do what
I wanted them to do. That was how I felt
my life should be, which is why I walked
around with a broom and dustpan and clean
toilets and clean tables, and then
you get cooperation. But if you sit at a desk and never show your face, and people
will not do it. I think a very important
lesson, for sure. Well, I definitely want
to talk more about Hollywood World and
how that has developed. But I also am
interested in your early relationship to
Santa Claus and the town, and I think a
of that also starts with your dad. So can
we jump back just a little bit and can
you tell me more about how he came to be
Santa Claus and how that played out when
you were younger? He came to be Santa
Claus when he was 19 years old, when
he was on the USS New York and Brooklyn
Navy Yard. And they said, we're going
to have a party for what they call
disadvantaged children. and somebody said, we
need a Santa Claus, and somebody said,
there's a guy in the engine room that says
he's from Santa Claus. They got him,
they put him up on the ship, I think
it's in here, a terrible beard, a
terrible outfit, and lots of children
gathered around him, and he said, at
that, I made a vow to God that if I lived
through the war, I would do this. So
that's how he did it. However, he was in the
Navy from that time until 1930, I think,
when he got out. And when he came back
here, he immediately did what Dad would
do. He went to visit the postmaster.
And the postmaster was really busy
with letters and Christmas mail. And
he said, oh, he's so busy, he can't do
all that, he has all this mail. So once
again, leadership. He just said, I'm going
to help you, Mr. Phillips. And he
started taking letters in his car, in boxes,
to the American Legion post, to the
VFW, to the Sisters of Ferdinand, the
Priests of St. Minor, typing class at Dale
Holmes, and people answered letters.
These are letters to Santa. That children
had written to Santa. And so that was just
one of the first things. And then I have
pictures of him he was supported by the American
Legion because it's the Santa Claus American
Legion he started the post and so he would
get ready for parades or going out and he
would be dressed as Santa Claus and he never
played it he believed it and he took it so
seriously he wrote a little book, I have
it somewhere How to Be a Real Santa He was
very, he'd be upset if he saw a Santa with
a nasty beard or, and he's saying you don't
ever speak like a regular person when you're out
in public if you're wearing the Santa Claus
suit. You keep your ho, ho, ho voice and
that sort of thing. You don't smoke and
smell like smoke. You don't drink alcohol.
You don't chew gum. You keep your beard white.
You do all these things. and he and another
man had a Santa school and I was there and
he was inducted into the International Santa
Claus Hall of Fame and then I was several
years later as only the second woman which
I really appreciated but anyway that's really
and then when Santa Claus Land was built
Lewis Cook who was Bill Cook's father is the
one that came up and said we need a place
for kids And they asked him to be Santa at
Santa Claus Land. So he officially became
Santa Claus there. And there was a room. It
was a Bavarian building. It's not there. I
mean, it's different now. But it faced
this highway that goes this way. I
don't know numbers. I think it might be 162. But anyway, the first
room was a souvenir shop. The next room was
a dining room selling Christmas dinners.
The next one was a display room where
kids could push buttons and things would go
around and lots of old stuff displayed. And
the next room was what they called the toy
shop where my dad sat at Santa Claus. And
we had cameras taking pictures and kids
lined up. And he was always so careful to
listen for a child's name while they were in.
And then when they came up, oh, James,
and the kids just, oh. And one time he had a
German child. He spoke German. He knew a little
Spanish from being in the war and a
little Italian. And he really made it real,
and he was wonderful. And we'd go
down on Sundays, my mother and the kids. Dad would be Santa.
Bill would be working. For a while I
didn't work that much because I had
small children. But we'd go down to
have lunch with Bill. And then we'd go in
to see Santa, and we'd bring him a hamburger.
He'd go in the back room and eat that one
hamburger and immediately back out. That was
just the way he was. And you know what?
When he was dying, he died when he
was 90 in 1984. My brother died in 83,
and he died in 84. And I had had him at
my house overnight. I was worried, and I was
taking him back home. And he said, Pat,
don't pay too much for one of
those boxes to put me in. That's not
smart. Just any old thing is okay.
I said, okay. And then he said, and
don't let them put in the newspaper that
Santa Claus died. Because they
probably would have. So we made
that an issue. He just really
thought about that all the time, keeping
that faith. keeping. And I think that's
what's so remarkable, why we work so hard
at these letters. They still believe,
at least they act like they
do. And they can look on anything
and see it on TV. I mean, kids will always
tell them at school that there's no Santa.
But I mean, you know, they're just more
everything, everything. And so when somebody
says, my friends say that you're not real.
We say, Santa is real. Santa is forever or
something. And mothers should thank us for
that. But to have them believe is so important,
don't you think? I mean, when you give
that up, you're just really giving up, not
just for the toys, but just, it's such a,
it's a spiritual thing. Yeah, I do
agree, very much. Well, if you could
walk me back even a little bit further with
that, with the Cook family story, how
did they come, they were from Evansville,
is that right? And then Lewis Cook, was
that the first one? So why did they want
to come here, and then how, what's
the early history of the park before
you came on board? Well, there were
two things. Here, in 1935, the big statue
was built by a man from New Harmony
called Carl Barrett. The Candy Castle was
built by a name of Milton Harris, and they
were going to start the first tourism
development in town. They got in a fight,
fight. We have a document down there about
land rights, and they started in 1935. When
I give a tour here I always say Santa
is four years younger than me, but he's
been there since 1935. And they got in a
fight, and the war came along, and
everything went to the war effort. I
lived through that. Everybody went
off either to a factory that made
guns or bullets or ships or whatever,
and it stopped. You just didn't
have business. So there's a picture
down there of this entity here, Santa Claus
Museum and Village, and it says Santa
Claus Park. Mr. Barrett was going to call it
a park, and he was going to develop
things here. And then I guess from 30, when
did the war start? 41, yeah. And it just,
there was nobody here. And so everything
was abandoned. It was just abandoned. It's
all grown up. That big sign that says Santa
Claus Park was gone. The statue has
remained from 35 on. One time somebody
that owned it painted it red, but
it was never red. And so Lewis Cook
was from a family of the three men and
two women. And the men were George,
Lewis, and Albert. And Lewis Cook was
my husband's father. And he married, he
was Catholic, he married the daughter
of a Presbyterian minister, and he
had nine children. And Bill was exactly
middle of nine children, five boys
and four girls. And so he was,
there's a biography of him, you can probably
find it, that his great-grandson
wrote, and he was, once again, an
extraordinary person. At first, he had what
he called a tin shop, and he rode a bicycle
to the tin shop in Evansville, and he made
tin bugles, like during the war, and they sold,
and we had some of them, one of my sons did,
and then that evolved. He rode a bicycle,
that evolved, and in his book that his his
great-grandson wrote, Mead Johnson was
developing a business, pharmacy things. It
would be kind of like Eli Lilly, but on a
smaller scale. And he had Enfamil, which was
a children's formula, but he didn't know
how to make it shelf -stable. Lewis Cook
found a way to make it shelf-stable, which
is not unusual. If you read, it's just amazing
how how this man, the things he did, and
they're still doing, and what my husband
did. It's that DNA. So, Mead Johnson
had a company on the Ohio River. He gave
Lewis Cook some property on the river, and
thanks for the infamil shelf-stable
stuff, and that became George Cook's sons,
because George was the father of Lewis,
George, and Albert. And then that became,
during the war, a business that really
succeeded a lot, making things from steel in
the war effort, and I'd have to research
that again. But that's when they started
growing, because of the war. A lot of companies
did. Evansville was, they had a place
that did something for the bombers, and it
was known as a city. P-47 factory down
there. P-47, that's it. And so that's what
got them then on, and they became mostly
air conditioning. It was carrier
air conditioning. When I married
Bill in 60, they were still
having board meetings with the
daughters and the sons in George
Cookson's building. And it was not large, but they had been
very successful. And two of the
older sons, Bob and Malcolm, had taken
over during the war. Bill went to the Navy. The others, L.J. wasn't old
enough, and so he was the one
that was gone. And so when he
came home, he did a post-graduate
degree at Annapolis. And he and two other
guys, this is a long story, but I'm going
to shorten it. There were eight young
men that were all chosen to come to
Annapolis because they had been Purdue with
engineering, or they had been somewhere
for architecture, and they were going to
be naval architecture or naval engineering
for the war effort. Because you said
Bill had graduated from Purdue. He
had graduated from Purdue. He had a
bachelor's in, I think, mechanical engineering. But then he did
that post-graduate course, and there
were eight men, and all with engineering
or architecture. And three of them
were sent to Pearl Harbor after the attack
because they were to help repair the
ships that were brought back when they were
damaged. And one of those men was
imprisoned by Castro and escaped and formed
a great business and was very, very
successful. The other man was from New Orleans.
He's the architect of the Superdome and
books and art and amazing and Bill
Cook. And those three were so close because
they were together at Pearl Harbor and
Bill would tell me stories about that,
that a ship would come in and they'd say,
you've got 24 hours, you've got 48 hours,
it has to be back out. And they just
did it. They worked until they got it
done so the ship could go back out. Now in
between, obviously they dated Hawaiian
girls, because I have a scrapbook of that,
but they had fun. Yeah. But that was his,
and then when the war was over, he
worked for an admiral in Washington, D
.C., and he got a lot of perks from working
with the admiral. He dated the
admiral's daughter. But I cannot, I'd
have to look. I have his, I have his tag.
I'm giving it to one of my kids. But when
he got out, he came home and wanted to
join his brothers in the business. And he
soon, and this is family businesses, they're
very complicated, decided that there
wasn't a future for him to be, if you see how
innovative and creative he is, he worked
in the advertising department and worked
for them. And so his dad had come in the meantime
in 46 and 45 and said, there's nothing
here for kids. I've got nine kids. You go to
a place called Santa Claus, you want to see
something for kids. So he built that Bavarian
building that had those places and for
my dad being in there. And then Bill
came up here, well the Santa
Claus land was dedicated August
3rd, 1946. And then Bill came
in 47. And that was really news. This
bachelor guy, thirty-some years old, is coming
up from Evansville and he's going to run this
place. And he did. And his mother and
father had even made an apartment in the
main building, and of course, and his sister
did the dollhouse, which is what this
was for a while, this building was a dollhouse
at Holiday World, showed antique dolls,
and so he just, he, and then we got married
in 60, December of 60, and we knew we
had to make it bigger because it couldn't
stay just a kiddie park because you couldn't
have big rides uh it we knew that it wouldn't
it wouldn't grow and neither one of us
were people who could stay stagnant just
the same old way over and over so in 84 we
decided to change the name which made the
whole perception it's holiday world it's
not a children's park it's for everybody
every age of course that took a while but we
got the first when we got the first coaster
that was a big deal so did I answer yes absolutely well and then

Description of the video:

People still call it Santa Claus Land. Oh, we got criticized. Oh, that's terrible. They can't change. And for a long time, we had both words. We'd have Holiday World Santa Claus Land, and we have a sign down there. They were out on the highways. But it wasn't easy. But then we built that first roller coaster. It all just evolved and worked very hard, Michelle. And when you talk about leadership, which maybe you'll get to that, I never thought about it as leadership.
I always thought about it as giving, as contributing, as being an inspiration, or showing how important it is to learn to work, and to be responsible, and to be dependable. And I think my greatest joy was having young kids at Santa Cos Land and Holiday World, because some of them have learned a lot
at home especially if they've been from farms they learn a little more nowadays particularly but when I was there and if I mean I just loved it and as I think about it I organized the cleaning crew everybody had their own broom and dustpan so they were responsible for it it got put on a hook at night that had your name you had your own bottle of what you spray with you had your own paper towels, and you were there on time, you were assigned to a place to be. I walked around with a broom and dustpan all the time. And one of the things I used to give talks for hospitality, which comes from the word hospitalitas, which comes from hospitals and hospice, and it means caring and taking care of. And so I always said to the young people, you don't work for me. We work together. We're a team. And then the other thing is so important, I think, is to respect even a young person that you might think is brash or irresponsible or whatever. If you respect them and take an interest, you can win them, and they will care and they will do and my greatest joy now is that those young people are still coming up to me today and I just I it's amazing well I see Mrs. Cook you told us to say yes ma'am and yes sir I still do it today because you said it and you taught us to look people in the eyes and shake hands and I still do it and one woman that I just knew had potential and she came to my Sachem Award that I got and she told the story about she was 14 or 15, her dad was verbally abusive and that I took her, I really did, I saw she had potential. You can tell, you just, women are good at that and she was getting, the father and she told it in public but she just, she needed support she needed somebody to believe in her She started dating a guy, and I said, okay, if you get pregnant, I'm finished. You just have to be responsible. You're at a good job. You can help yourself now. None of that. Well, they got divorced because she found out it was the wrong person. But again, I said, do you think you could go to college? She did. I said, I will help you. I did. And she got a bachelor's degree. She's very, very, very
successful now. And she always tells people about that. Because I don't know if she would have made it. It was a bad, bad situation. But she learned a lot. She was HR for us for a while. And then somehow she got into real estate. And she was just so successful. But those stories, that's why you do it. I'm not going to be here forever. Whatever. Even with this, Kathleen is wonderful. She's just so good. And do you mean to be a fan here? Yes, I started it.

I had this idea that history should be remembered, and it should be remembered right, and it should be documented, and we should show why it's
history and all that, and we should talk about that whole process. But she's the best. and she's a very, she's a self -starter. She thinks
of things to do. I don't, I don't, I just, Kathleen can go because I won't be here and she may be, my daughter is very interested but right now she's gone with her, she still has kids, haven't been married, haven't had any grandkids, there's just still a lot ahead for her and I have to rely, you have, what I felt like was I had to teach them so I wasn't necessary anymore. Anything I belonged to or did, I always felt that way. I started a thing in the diocese, another woman and I, in the diocese of Evansville, and I was real active. The diocese is a unit in the Catholic Church with a bishop. And a woman in Kentucky said, I do a wisdom program, and it's for senior citizens because they don't get enough attention. Some parishes have clubs, but not everybody. So Bill and I, he went with me. We went over there, and we went to one of their meetings. It was so much fun, and I saw all these senior citizens, and it's free. Everything's free. They come in, they sign, they get a meal, they get entertainment, they do exercise, they have speakers, and it's like 9 to 3. They get tired after 3 o'clock. And I thought, that's a great idea. So Donna and I said, let's start this in Evansville. Well, we did. And she said, well, you have to go to the bishop and tell him, Bishop Gettelfinger, you have to get him to approve. So she sent me to the bishop. So I went to the bishop, told him, he said, well, you have to talk to the presbyterate, which is all the priests
when they come for a meeting. So I had
to talk to all them. and he said and you
have to you have to let them know they don't
won't have any extra work so we took it
over and they bought it and now we have a
meeting in Evansville one in Jasper and one
in Vincennes and they get hundreds and it's
a beautiful day and now I used to MCM I
used to organize with Lent with Donna she's
in a home now but I don't have to do much
and that's the way it should be because people
are doing it because it's a good thing
and it's always a woman mostly once there's
been a man in Vincennes who's been great
but it's continuing so I think one of the
big things in leadership is to know you do
it and you risk something not everything
my husband used to say I told my kids he
said I told the kids don't think everything
I tried that was successful No, I tried
things that didn't work. But try, just
give it a try. So the same way with
lots of things. And so that's one thing
that has been very successful. And I
just got a call from Vincennes. We're having
it in October. Will you be there and will
you speak? And I would say very short, I'm
not supposed to be the thing of the day. They
get their speakers. But just tell a
little history and how glad I am to be. And
there are 100-year-old people there now,
which never used to be. So I don't know why
I'm telling that story, except that I think
I have, when you talk about leadership, I
think in the younger years, I was more into
the form of leadership, like making
procedures and that sort of thing.
And now I'm more into the spirit
of leadership, helping people
become and helping things become, but
then having other people, and you
need other people. When I got that of
Sachem, I think it is, I said, I didn't
do this by myself. You don't do
anything by yourself. I don't like numbers.
I have to have men or people or
whoever likes numbers make the budget or
do what they're going to do, and you have
to have others. And like here, we have such great volunteers. They're just
wonderful, and they have talent
I don't have. And they do
things I can't do, especially now
being older. So you need to
form, relationships are the biggest
part I think of leadership,
relationships and all the rest of it. My big mantra when I
used to give it in talks, I wanted the people
that worked with me, I I needed to be what
I wanted them to be, and I needed to do what
I wanted them to do. That was how I felt
my life should be, which is why I walked
around with a broom and dustpan and clean
toilets and clean tables, and then
you get cooperation. But if you sit at a desk and never show your face, and people
will not do it. I think a very important
lesson, for sure. Well, I definitely want
to talk more about Hollywood World and
how that has developed. But I also am
interested in your early relationship to
Santa Claus and the town, and I think a
of that also starts with your dad. So can
we jump back just a little bit and can
you tell me more about how he came to be
Santa Claus and how that played out when
you were younger? He came to be Santa
Claus when he was 19 years old, when
he was on the USS New York and Brooklyn
Navy Yard. And they said, we're going
to have a party for what they call
disadvantaged children. and somebody said, we
need a Santa Claus, and somebody said,
there's a guy in the engine room that says
he's from Santa Claus. They got him,
they put him up on the ship, I think
it's in here, a terrible beard, a
terrible outfit, and lots of children
gathered around him, and he said, at
that, I made a vow to God that if I lived
through the war, I would do this. So
that's how he did it. However, he was in the
Navy from that time until 1930, I think,
when he got out. And when he came back
here, he immediately did what Dad would
do. He went to visit the postmaster.
And the postmaster was really busy
with letters and Christmas mail. And
he said, oh, he's so busy, he can't do
all that, he has all this mail. So once
again, leadership. He just said, I'm going
to help you, Mr. Phillips. And he
started taking letters in his car, in boxes,
to the American Legion post, to the
VFW, to the Sisters of Ferdinand, the
Priests of St. Minor, typing class at Dale
Holmes, and people answered letters.
These are letters to Santa. That children
had written to Santa. And so that was just
one of the first things. And then I have
pictures of him he was supported by the American
Legion because it's the Santa Claus American
Legion he started the post and so he would
get ready for parades or going out and he
would be dressed as Santa Claus and he never
played it he believed it and he took it so
seriously he wrote a little book, I have
it somewhere How to Be a Real Santa He was
very, he'd be upset if he saw a Santa with
a nasty beard or, and he's saying you don't
ever speak like a regular person when you're out
in public if you're wearing the Santa Claus
suit. You keep your ho, ho, ho voice and
that sort of thing. You don't smoke and
smell like smoke. You don't drink alcohol.
You don't chew gum. You keep your beard white.
You do all these things. and he and another
man had a Santa school and I was there and
he was inducted into the International Santa
Claus Hall of Fame and then I was several
years later as only the second woman which
I really appreciated but anyway that's really
and then when Santa Claus Land was built
Lewis Cook who was Bill Cook's father is the
one that came up and said we need a place
for kids And they asked him to be Santa at
Santa Claus Land. So he officially became
Santa Claus there. And there was a room. It
was a Bavarian building. It's not there. I
mean, it's different now. But it faced
this highway that goes this way. I
don't know numbers. I think it might be 162. But anyway, the first
room was a souvenir shop. The next room was
a dining room selling Christmas dinners.
The next one was a display room where
kids could push buttons and things would go
around and lots of old stuff displayed. And
the next room was what they called the toy
shop where my dad sat at Santa Claus. And
we had cameras taking pictures and kids
lined up. And he was always so careful to
listen for a child's name while they were in.
And then when they came up, oh, James,
and the kids just, oh. And one time he had a
German child. He spoke German. He knew a little
Spanish from being in the war and a
little Italian. And he really made it real,
and he was wonderful. And we'd go
down on Sundays, my mother and the kids. Dad would be Santa.
Bill would be working. For a while I
didn't work that much because I had
small children. But we'd go down to
have lunch with Bill. And then we'd go in
to see Santa, and we'd bring him a hamburger.
He'd go in the back room and eat that one
hamburger and immediately back out. That was
just the way he was. And you know what?
When he was dying, he died when he
was 90 in 1984. My brother died in 83,
and he died in 84. And I had had him at
my house overnight. I was worried, and I was
taking him back home. And he said, Pat,
don't pay too much for one of
those boxes to put me in. That's not
smart. Just any old thing is okay.
I said, okay. And then he said, and
don't let them put in the newspaper that
Santa Claus died. Because they
probably would have. So we made
that an issue. He just really
thought about that all the time, keeping
that faith. keeping. And I think that's
what's so remarkable, why we work so hard
at these letters. They still believe,
at least they act like they
do. And they can look on anything
and see it on TV. I mean, kids will always
tell them at school that there's no Santa.
But I mean, you know, they're just more
everything, everything. And so when somebody
says, my friends say that you're not real.
We say, Santa is real. Santa is forever or
something. And mothers should thank us for
that. But to have them believe is so important,
don't you think? I mean, when you give
that up, you're just really giving up, not
just for the toys, but just, it's such a,
it's a spiritual thing. Yeah, I do
agree, very much. Well, if you could
walk me back even a little bit further with
that, with the Cook family story, how
did they come, they were from Evansville,
is that right? And then Lewis Cook, was
that the first one? So why did they want
to come here, and then how, what's
the early history of the park before
you came on board? Well, there were
two things. Here, in 1935, the big statue
was built by a man from New Harmony
called Carl Barrett. The Candy Castle was
built by a name of Milton Harris, and they
were going to start the first tourism
development in town. They got in a fight,
fight. We have a document down there about
land rights, and they started in 1935. When
I give a tour here I always say Santa
is four years younger than me, but he's
been there since 1935. And they got in a
fight, and the war came along, and
everything went to the war effort. I
lived through that. Everybody went
off either to a factory that made
guns or bullets or ships or whatever,
and it stopped. You just didn't
have business. So there's a picture
down there of this entity here, Santa Claus
Museum and Village, and it says Santa
Claus Park. Mr. Barrett was going to call it
a park, and he was going to develop
things here. And then I guess from 30, when
did the war start? 41, yeah. And it just,
there was nobody here. And so everything
was abandoned. It was just abandoned. It's
all grown up. That big sign that says Santa
Claus Park was gone. The statue has
remained from 35 on. One time somebody
that owned it painted it red, but
it was never red. And so Lewis Cook
was from a family of the three men and
two women. And the men were George,
Lewis, and Albert. And Lewis Cook was
my husband's father. And he married, he
was Catholic, he married the daughter
of a Presbyterian minister, and he
had nine children. And Bill was exactly
middle of nine children, five boys
and four girls. And so he was,
there's a biography of him, you can probably
find it, that his great-grandson
wrote, and he was, once again, an
extraordinary person. At first, he had what
he called a tin shop, and he rode a bicycle
to the tin shop in Evansville, and he made
tin bugles, like during the war, and they sold,
and we had some of them, one of my sons did,
and then that evolved. He rode a bicycle,
that evolved, and in his book that his his
great-grandson wrote, Mead Johnson was
developing a business, pharmacy things. It
would be kind of like Eli Lilly, but on a
smaller scale. And he had Enfamil, which was
a children's formula, but he didn't know
how to make it shelf -stable. Lewis Cook
found a way to make it shelf-stable, which
is not unusual. If you read, it's just amazing
how how this man, the things he did, and
they're still doing, and what my husband
did. It's that DNA. So, Mead Johnson
had a company on the Ohio River. He gave
Lewis Cook some property on the river, and
thanks for the infamil shelf-stable
stuff, and that became George Cook's sons,
because George was the father of Lewis,
George, and Albert. And then that became,
during the war, a business that really
succeeded a lot, making things from steel in
the war effort, and I'd have to research
that again. But that's when they started
growing, because of the war. A lot of companies
did. Evansville was, they had a place
that did something for the bombers, and it
was known as a city. P-47 factory down
there. P-47, that's it. And so that's what
got them then on, and they became mostly
air conditioning. It was carrier
air conditioning. When I married
Bill in 60, they were still
having board meetings with the
daughters and the sons in George
Cookson's building. And it was not large, but they had been
very successful. And two of the
older sons, Bob and Malcolm, had taken
over during the war. Bill went to the Navy. The others, L.J. wasn't old
enough, and so he was the one
that was gone. And so when he
came home, he did a post-graduate
degree at Annapolis. And he and two other
guys, this is a long story, but I'm going
to shorten it. There were eight young
men that were all chosen to come to
Annapolis because they had been Purdue with
engineering, or they had been somewhere
for architecture, and they were going to
be naval architecture or naval engineering
for the war effort. Because you said
Bill had graduated from Purdue. He
had graduated from Purdue. He had a
bachelor's in, I think, mechanical engineering. But then he did
that post-graduate course, and there
were eight men, and all with engineering
or architecture. And three of them
were sent to Pearl Harbor after the attack
because they were to help repair the
ships that were brought back when they were
damaged. And one of those men was
imprisoned by Castro and escaped and formed
a great business and was very, very
successful. The other man was from New Orleans.
He's the architect of the Superdome and
books and art and amazing and Bill
Cook. And those three were so close because
they were together at Pearl Harbor and
Bill would tell me stories about that,
that a ship would come in and they'd say,
you've got 24 hours, you've got 48 hours,
it has to be back out. And they just
did it. They worked until they got it
done so the ship could go back out. Now in
between, obviously they dated Hawaiian
girls, because I have a scrapbook of that,
but they had fun. Yeah. But that was his,
and then when the war was over, he
worked for an admiral in Washington, D
.C., and he got a lot of perks from working
with the admiral. He dated the
admiral's daughter. But I cannot, I'd
have to look. I have his, I have his tag.
I'm giving it to one of my kids. But when
he got out, he came home and wanted to
join his brothers in the business. And he
soon, and this is family businesses, they're
very complicated, decided that there
wasn't a future for him to be, if you see how
innovative and creative he is, he worked
in the advertising department and worked
for them. And so his dad had come in the meantime
in 46 and 45 and said, there's nothing
here for kids. I've got nine kids. You go to
a place called Santa Claus, you want to see
something for kids. So he built that Bavarian
building that had those places and for
my dad being in there. And then Bill
came up here, well the Santa
Claus land was dedicated August
3rd, 1946. And then Bill came
in 47. And that was really news. This
bachelor guy, thirty-some years old, is coming
up from Evansville and he's going to run this
place. And he did. And his mother and
father had even made an apartment in the
main building, and of course, and his sister
did the dollhouse, which is what this
was for a while, this building was a dollhouse
at Holiday World, showed antique dolls,
and so he just, he, and then we got married
in 60, December of 60, and we knew we
had to make it bigger because it couldn't
stay just a kiddie park because you couldn't
have big rides uh it we knew that it wouldn't
it wouldn't grow and neither one of us
were people who could stay stagnant just
the same old way over and over so in 84 we
decided to change the name which made the
whole perception it's holiday world it's
not a children's park it's for everybody
every age of course that took a while but we
got the first when we got the first coaster
that was a big deal so did I answer yes absolutely well and then

Description of the video:

People still call it Santa Claus Land. Oh, we got criticized. Oh, that's terrible. They can't change. And for a long time, we had both words. We'd have Holiday World Santa Claus Land, and we have a sign down there. They were out on the highways. But it wasn't easy. But then we built that first roller coaster. It all just evolved and worked very hard, Michelle. And when you talk about leadership, which maybe you'll get to that, I never thought about it as leadership.
I always thought about it as giving, as contributing, as being an inspiration, or showing how important it is to learn to work, and to be responsible, and to be dependable. And I think my greatest joy was having young kids at Santa Cos Land and Holiday World, because some of them have learned a lot
at home especially if they've been from farms they learn a little more nowadays particularly but when I was there and if I mean I just loved it and as I think about it I organized the cleaning crew everybody had their own broom and dustpan so they were responsible for it it got put on a hook at night that had your name you had your own bottle of what you spray with you had your own paper towels, and you were there on time, you were assigned to a place to be. I walked around with a broom and dustpan all the time. And one of the things I used to give talks for hospitality, which comes from the word hospitalitas, which comes from hospitals and hospice, and it means caring and taking care of. And so I always said to the young people, you don't work for me. We work together. We're a team. And then the other thing is so important, I think, is to respect even a young person that you might think is brash or irresponsible or whatever. If you respect them and take an interest, you can win them, and they will care and they will do and my greatest joy now is that those young people are still coming up to me today and I just I it's amazing well I see Mrs. Cook you told us to say yes ma'am and yes sir I still do it today because you said it and you taught us to look people in the eyes and shake hands and I still do it and one woman that I just knew had potential and she came to my Sachem Award that I got and she told the story about she was 14 or 15, her dad was verbally abusive and that I took her, I really did, I saw she had potential. You can tell, you just, women are good at that and she was getting, the father and she told it in public but she just, she needed support she needed somebody to believe in her She started dating a guy, and I said, okay, if you get pregnant, I'm finished. You just have to be responsible. You're at a good job. You can help yourself now. None of that. Well, they got divorced because she found out it was the wrong person. But again, I said, do you think you could go to college? She did. I said, I will help you. I did. And she got a bachelor's degree. She's very, very, very
successful now. And she always tells people about that. Because I don't know if she would have made it. It was a bad, bad situation. But she learned a lot. She was HR for us for a while. And then somehow she got into real estate. And she was just so successful. But those stories, that's why you do it. I'm not going to be here forever. Whatever. Even with this, Kathleen is wonderful. She's just so good. And do you mean to be a fan here? Yes, I started it.

I had this idea that history should be remembered, and it should be remembered right, and it should be documented, and we should show why it's
history and all that, and we should talk about that whole process. But she's the best. and she's a very, she's a self -starter. She thinks
of things to do. I don't, I don't, I just, Kathleen can go because I won't be here and she may be, my daughter is very interested but right now she's gone with her, she still has kids, haven't been married, haven't had any grandkids, there's just still a lot ahead for her and I have to rely, you have, what I felt like was I had to teach them so I wasn't necessary anymore. Anything I belonged to or did, I always felt that way. I started a thing in the diocese, another woman and I, in the diocese of Evansville, and I was real active. The diocese is a unit in the Catholic Church with a bishop. And a woman in Kentucky said, I do a wisdom program, and it's for senior citizens because they don't get enough attention. Some parishes have clubs, but not everybody. So Bill and I, he went with me. We went over there, and we went to one of their meetings. It was so much fun, and I saw all these senior citizens, and it's free. Everything's free. They come in, they sign, they get a meal, they get entertainment, they do exercise, they have speakers, and it's like 9 to 3. They get tired after 3 o'clock. And I thought, that's a great idea. So Donna and I said, let's start this in Evansville. Well, we did. And she said, well, you have to go to the bishop and tell him, Bishop Gettelfinger, you have to get him to approve. So she sent me to the bishop. So I went to the bishop, told him, he said, well, you have to talk to the presbyterate, which is all the priests
when they come for a meeting. So I had
to talk to all them. and he said and you
have to you have to let them know they don't
won't have any extra work so we took it
over and they bought it and now we have a
meeting in Evansville one in Jasper and one
in Vincennes and they get hundreds and it's
a beautiful day and now I used to MCM I
used to organize with Lent with Donna she's
in a home now but I don't have to do much
and that's the way it should be because people
are doing it because it's a good thing
and it's always a woman mostly once there's
been a man in Vincennes who's been great
but it's continuing so I think one of the
big things in leadership is to know you do
it and you risk something not everything
my husband used to say I told my kids he
said I told the kids don't think everything
I tried that was successful No, I tried
things that didn't work. But try, just
give it a try. So the same way with
lots of things. And so that's one thing
that has been very successful. And I
just got a call from Vincennes. We're having
it in October. Will you be there and will
you speak? And I would say very short, I'm
not supposed to be the thing of the day. They
get their speakers. But just tell a
little history and how glad I am to be. And
there are 100-year-old people there now,
which never used to be. So I don't know why
I'm telling that story, except that I think
I have, when you talk about leadership, I
think in the younger years, I was more into
the form of leadership, like making
procedures and that sort of thing.
And now I'm more into the spirit
of leadership, helping people
become and helping things become, but
then having other people, and you
need other people. When I got that of
Sachem, I think it is, I said, I didn't
do this by myself. You don't do
anything by yourself. I don't like numbers.
I have to have men or people or
whoever likes numbers make the budget or
do what they're going to do, and you have
to have others. And like here, we have such great volunteers. They're just
wonderful, and they have talent
I don't have. And they do
things I can't do, especially now
being older. So you need to
form, relationships are the biggest
part I think of leadership,
relationships and all the rest of it. My big mantra when I
used to give it in talks, I wanted the people
that worked with me, I I needed to be what
I wanted them to be, and I needed to do what
I wanted them to do. That was how I felt
my life should be, which is why I walked
around with a broom and dustpan and clean
toilets and clean tables, and then
you get cooperation. But if you sit at a desk and never show your face, and people
will not do it. I think a very important
lesson, for sure. Well, I definitely want
to talk more about Hollywood World and
how that has developed. But I also am
interested in your early relationship to
Santa Claus and the town, and I think a
of that also starts with your dad. So can
we jump back just a little bit and can
you tell me more about how he came to be
Santa Claus and how that played out when
you were younger? He came to be Santa
Claus when he was 19 years old, when
he was on the USS New York and Brooklyn
Navy Yard. And they said, we're going
to have a party for what they call
disadvantaged children. and somebody said, we
need a Santa Claus, and somebody said,
there's a guy in the engine room that says
he's from Santa Claus. They got him,
they put him up on the ship, I think
it's in here, a terrible beard, a
terrible outfit, and lots of children
gathered around him, and he said, at
that, I made a vow to God that if I lived
through the war, I would do this. So
that's how he did it. However, he was in the
Navy from that time until 1930, I think,
when he got out. And when he came back
here, he immediately did what Dad would
do. He went to visit the postmaster.
And the postmaster was really busy
with letters and Christmas mail. And
he said, oh, he's so busy, he can't do
all that, he has all this mail. So once
again, leadership. He just said, I'm going
to help you, Mr. Phillips. And he
started taking letters in his car, in boxes,
to the American Legion post, to the
VFW, to the Sisters of Ferdinand, the
Priests of St. Minor, typing class at Dale
Holmes, and people answered letters.
These are letters to Santa. That children
had written to Santa. And so that was just
one of the first things. And then I have
pictures of him he was supported by the American
Legion because it's the Santa Claus American
Legion he started the post and so he would
get ready for parades or going out and he
would be dressed as Santa Claus and he never
played it he believed it and he took it so
seriously he wrote a little book, I have
it somewhere How to Be a Real Santa He was
very, he'd be upset if he saw a Santa with
a nasty beard or, and he's saying you don't
ever speak like a regular person when you're out
in public if you're wearing the Santa Claus
suit. You keep your ho, ho, ho voice and
that sort of thing. You don't smoke and
smell like smoke. You don't drink alcohol.
You don't chew gum. You keep your beard white.
You do all these things. and he and another
man had a Santa school and I was there and
he was inducted into the International Santa
Claus Hall of Fame and then I was several
years later as only the second woman which
I really appreciated but anyway that's really
and then when Santa Claus Land was built
Lewis Cook who was Bill Cook's father is the
one that came up and said we need a place
for kids And they asked him to be Santa at
Santa Claus Land. So he officially became
Santa Claus there. And there was a room. It
was a Bavarian building. It's not there. I
mean, it's different now. But it faced
this highway that goes this way. I
don't know numbers. I think it might be 162. But anyway, the first
room was a souvenir shop. The next room was
a dining room selling Christmas dinners.
The next one was a display room where
kids could push buttons and things would go
around and lots of old stuff displayed. And
the next room was what they called the toy
shop where my dad sat at Santa Claus. And
we had cameras taking pictures and kids
lined up. And he was always so careful to
listen for a child's name while they were in.
And then when they came up, oh, James,
and the kids just, oh. And one time he had a
German child. He spoke German. He knew a little
Spanish from being in the war and a
little Italian. And he really made it real,
and he was wonderful. And we'd go
down on Sundays, my mother and the kids. Dad would be Santa.
Bill would be working. For a while I
didn't work that much because I had
small children. But we'd go down to
have lunch with Bill. And then we'd go in
to see Santa, and we'd bring him a hamburger.
He'd go in the back room and eat that one
hamburger and immediately back out. That was
just the way he was. And you know what?
When he was dying, he died when he
was 90 in 1984. My brother died in 83,
and he died in 84. And I had had him at
my house overnight. I was worried, and I was
taking him back home. And he said, Pat,
don't pay too much for one of
those boxes to put me in. That's not
smart. Just any old thing is okay.
I said, okay. And then he said, and
don't let them put in the newspaper that
Santa Claus died. Because they
probably would have. So we made
that an issue. He just really
thought about that all the time, keeping
that faith. keeping. And I think that's
what's so remarkable, why we work so hard
at these letters. They still believe,
at least they act like they
do. And they can look on anything
and see it on TV. I mean, kids will always
tell them at school that there's no Santa.
But I mean, you know, they're just more
everything, everything. And so when somebody
says, my friends say that you're not real.
We say, Santa is real. Santa is forever or
something. And mothers should thank us for
that. But to have them believe is so important,
don't you think? I mean, when you give
that up, you're just really giving up, not
just for the toys, but just, it's such a,
it's a spiritual thing. Yeah, I do
agree, very much. Well, if you could
walk me back even a little bit further with
that, with the Cook family story, how
did they come, they were from Evansville,
is that right? And then Lewis Cook, was
that the first one? So why did they want
to come here, and then how, what's
the early history of the park before
you came on board? Well, there were
two things. Here, in 1935, the big statue
was built by a man from New Harmony
called Carl Barrett. The Candy Castle was
built by a name of Milton Harris, and they
were going to start the first tourism
development in town. They got in a fight,
fight. We have a document down there about
land rights, and they started in 1935. When
I give a tour here I always say Santa
is four years younger than me, but he's
been there since 1935. And they got in a
fight, and the war came along, and
everything went to the war effort. I
lived through that. Everybody went
off either to a factory that made
guns or bullets or ships or whatever,
and it stopped. You just didn't
have business. So there's a picture
down there of this entity here, Santa Claus
Museum and Village, and it says Santa
Claus Park. Mr. Barrett was going to call it
a park, and he was going to develop
things here. And then I guess from 30, when
did the war start? 41, yeah. And it just,
there was nobody here. And so everything
was abandoned. It was just abandoned. It's
all grown up. That big sign that says Santa
Claus Park was gone. The statue has
remained from 35 on. One time somebody
that owned it painted it red, but
it was never red. And so Lewis Cook
was from a family of the three men and
two women. And the men were George,
Lewis, and Albert. And Lewis Cook was
my husband's father. And he married, he
was Catholic, he married the daughter
of a Presbyterian minister, and he
had nine children. And Bill was exactly
middle of nine children, five boys
and four girls. And so he was,
there's a biography of him, you can probably
find it, that his great-grandson
wrote, and he was, once again, an
extraordinary person. At first, he had what
he called a tin shop, and he rode a bicycle
to the tin shop in Evansville, and he made
tin bugles, like during the war, and they sold,
and we had some of them, one of my sons did,
and then that evolved. He rode a bicycle,
that evolved, and in his book that his his
great-grandson wrote, Mead Johnson was
developing a business, pharmacy things. It
would be kind of like Eli Lilly, but on a
smaller scale. And he had Enfamil, which was
a children's formula, but he didn't know
how to make it shelf -stable. Lewis Cook
found a way to make it shelf-stable, which
is not unusual. If you read, it's just amazing
how how this man, the things he did, and
they're still doing, and what my husband
did. It's that DNA. So, Mead Johnson
had a company on the Ohio River. He gave
Lewis Cook some property on the river, and
thanks for the infamil shelf-stable
stuff, and that became George Cook's sons,
because George was the father of Lewis,
George, and Albert. And then that became,
during the war, a business that really
succeeded a lot, making things from steel in
the war effort, and I'd have to research
that again. But that's when they started
growing, because of the war. A lot of companies
did. Evansville was, they had a place
that did something for the bombers, and it
was known as a city. P-47 factory down
there. P-47, that's it. And so that's what
got them then on, and they became mostly
air conditioning. It was carrier
air conditioning. When I married
Bill in 60, they were still
having board meetings with the
daughters and the sons in George
Cookson's building. And it was not large, but they had been
very successful. And two of the
older sons, Bob and Malcolm, had taken
over during the war. Bill went to the Navy. The others, L.J. wasn't old
enough, and so he was the one
that was gone. And so when he
came home, he did a post-graduate
degree at Annapolis. And he and two other
guys, this is a long story, but I'm going
to shorten it. There were eight young
men that were all chosen to come to
Annapolis because they had been Purdue with
engineering, or they had been somewhere
for architecture, and they were going to
be naval architecture or naval engineering
for the war effort. Because you said
Bill had graduated from Purdue. He
had graduated from Purdue. He had a
bachelor's in, I think, mechanical engineering. But then he did
that post-graduate course, and there
were eight men, and all with engineering
or architecture. And three of them
were sent to Pearl Harbor after the attack
because they were to help repair the
ships that were brought back when they were
damaged. And one of those men was
imprisoned by Castro and escaped and formed
a great business and was very, very
successful. The other man was from New Orleans.
He's the architect of the Superdome and
books and art and amazing and Bill
Cook. And those three were so close because
they were together at Pearl Harbor and
Bill would tell me stories about that,
that a ship would come in and they'd say,
you've got 24 hours, you've got 48 hours,
it has to be back out. And they just
did it. They worked until they got it
done so the ship could go back out. Now in
between, obviously they dated Hawaiian
girls, because I have a scrapbook of that,
but they had fun. Yeah. But that was his,
and then when the war was over, he
worked for an admiral in Washington, D
.C., and he got a lot of perks from working
with the admiral. He dated the
admiral's daughter. But I cannot, I'd
have to look. I have his, I have his tag.
I'm giving it to one of my kids. But when
he got out, he came home and wanted to
join his brothers in the business. And he
soon, and this is family businesses, they're
very complicated, decided that there
wasn't a future for him to be, if you see how
innovative and creative he is, he worked
in the advertising department and worked
for them. And so his dad had come in the meantime
in 46 and 45 and said, there's nothing
here for kids. I've got nine kids. You go to
a place called Santa Claus, you want to see
something for kids. So he built that Bavarian
building that had those places and for
my dad being in there. And then Bill
came up here, well the Santa
Claus land was dedicated August
3rd, 1946. And then Bill came
in 47. And that was really news. This
bachelor guy, thirty-some years old, is coming
up from Evansville and he's going to run this
place. And he did. And his mother and
father had even made an apartment in the
main building, and of course, and his sister
did the dollhouse, which is what this
was for a while, this building was a dollhouse
at Holiday World, showed antique dolls,
and so he just, he, and then we got married
in 60, December of 60, and we knew we
had to make it bigger because it couldn't
stay just a kiddie park because you couldn't
have big rides uh it we knew that it wouldn't
it wouldn't grow and neither one of us
were people who could stay stagnant just
the same old way over and over so in 84 we
decided to change the name which made the
whole perception it's holiday world it's
not a children's park it's for everybody
every age of course that took a while but we
got the first when we got the first coaster
that was a big deal so did I answer yes absolutely well and then

Description of the video:

People still call it Santa Claus Land. Oh, we got criticized. Oh, that's terrible. They can't change. And for a long time, we had both words. We'd have Holiday World Santa Claus Land, and we have a sign down there. They were out on the highways. But it wasn't easy. But then we built that first roller coaster. It all just evolved and worked very hard, Michelle. And when you talk about leadership, which maybe you'll get to that, I never thought about it as leadership.
I always thought about it as giving, as contributing, as being an inspiration, or showing how important it is to learn to work, and to be responsible, and to be dependable. And I think my greatest joy was having young kids at Santa Cos Land and Holiday World, because some of them have learned a lot
at home especially if they've been from farms they learn a little more nowadays particularly but when I was there and if I mean I just loved it and as I think about it I organized the cleaning crew everybody had their own broom and dustpan so they were responsible for it it got put on a hook at night that had your name you had your own bottle of what you spray with you had your own paper towels, and you were there on time, you were assigned to a place to be. I walked around with a broom and dustpan all the time. And one of the things I used to give talks for hospitality, which comes from the word hospitalitas, which comes from hospitals and hospice, and it means caring and taking care of. And so I always said to the young people, you don't work for me. We work together. We're a team. And then the other thing is so important, I think, is to respect even a young person that you might think is brash or irresponsible or whatever. If you respect them and take an interest, you can win them, and they will care and they will do and my greatest joy now is that those young people are still coming up to me today and I just I it's amazing well I see Mrs. Cook you told us to say yes ma'am and yes sir I still do it today because you said it and you taught us to look people in the eyes and shake hands and I still do it and one woman that I just knew had potential and she came to my Sachem Award that I got and she told the story about she was 14 or 15, her dad was verbally abusive and that I took her, I really did, I saw she had potential. You can tell, you just, women are good at that and she was getting, the father and she told it in public but she just, she needed support she needed somebody to believe in her She started dating a guy, and I said, okay, if you get pregnant, I'm finished. You just have to be responsible. You're at a good job. You can help yourself now. None of that. Well, they got divorced because she found out it was the wrong person. But again, I said, do you think you could go to college? She did. I said, I will help you. I did. And she got a bachelor's degree. She's very, very, very
successful now. And she always tells people about that. Because I don't know if she would have made it. It was a bad, bad situation. But she learned a lot. She was HR for us for a while. And then somehow she got into real estate. And she was just so successful. But those stories, that's why you do it. I'm not going to be here forever. Whatever. Even with this, Kathleen is wonderful. She's just so good. And do you mean to be a fan here? Yes, I started it.

I had this idea that history should be remembered, and it should be remembered right, and it should be documented, and we should show why it's
history and all that, and we should talk about that whole process. But she's the best. and she's a very, she's a self -starter. She thinks
of things to do. I don't, I don't, I just, Kathleen can go because I won't be here and she may be, my daughter is very interested but right now she's gone with her, she still has kids, haven't been married, haven't had any grandkids, there's just still a lot ahead for her and I have to rely, you have, what I felt like was I had to teach them so I wasn't necessary anymore. Anything I belonged to or did, I always felt that way. I started a thing in the diocese, another woman and I, in the diocese of Evansville, and I was real active. The diocese is a unit in the Catholic Church with a bishop. And a woman in Kentucky said, I do a wisdom program, and it's for senior citizens because they don't get enough attention. Some parishes have clubs, but not everybody. So Bill and I, he went with me. We went over there, and we went to one of their meetings. It was so much fun, and I saw all these senior citizens, and it's free. Everything's free. They come in, they sign, they get a meal, they get entertainment, they do exercise, they have speakers, and it's like 9 to 3. They get tired after 3 o'clock. And I thought, that's a great idea. So Donna and I said, let's start this in Evansville. Well, we did. And she said, well, you have to go to the bishop and tell him, Bishop Gettelfinger, you have to get him to approve. So she sent me to the bishop. So I went to the bishop, told him, he said, well, you have to talk to the presbyterate, which is all the priests
when they come for a meeting. So I had
to talk to all them. and he said and you
have to you have to let them know they don't
won't have any extra work so we took it
over and they bought it and now we have a
meeting in Evansville one in Jasper and one
in Vincennes and they get hundreds and it's
a beautiful day and now I used to MCM I
used to organize with Lent with Donna she's
in a home now but I don't have to do much
and that's the way it should be because people
are doing it because it's a good thing
and it's always a woman mostly once there's
been a man in Vincennes who's been great
but it's continuing so I think one of the
big things in leadership is to know you do
it and you risk something not everything
my husband used to say I told my kids he
said I told the kids don't think everything
I tried that was successful No, I tried
things that didn't work. But try, just
give it a try. So the same way with
lots of things. And so that's one thing
that has been very successful. And I
just got a call from Vincennes. We're having
it in October. Will you be there and will
you speak? And I would say very short, I'm
not supposed to be the thing of the day. They
get their speakers. But just tell a
little history and how glad I am to be. And
there are 100-year-old people there now,
which never used to be. So I don't know why
I'm telling that story, except that I think
I have, when you talk about leadership, I
think in the younger years, I was more into
the form of leadership, like making
procedures and that sort of thing.
And now I'm more into the spirit
of leadership, helping people
become and helping things become, but
then having other people, and you
need other people. When I got that of
Sachem, I think it is, I said, I didn't
do this by myself. You don't do
anything by yourself. I don't like numbers.
I have to have men or people or
whoever likes numbers make the budget or
do what they're going to do, and you have
to have others. And like here, we have such great volunteers. They're just
wonderful, and they have talent
I don't have. And they do
things I can't do, especially now
being older. So you need to
form, relationships are the biggest
part I think of leadership,
relationships and all the rest of it. My big mantra when I
used to give it in talks, I wanted the people
that worked with me, I I needed to be what
I wanted them to be, and I needed to do what
I wanted them to do. That was how I felt
my life should be, which is why I walked
around with a broom and dustpan and clean
toilets and clean tables, and then
you get cooperation. But if you sit at a desk and never show your face, and people
will not do it. I think a very important
lesson, for sure. Well, I definitely want
to talk more about Hollywood World and
how that has developed. But I also am
interested in your early relationship to
Santa Claus and the town, and I think a
of that also starts with your dad. So can
we jump back just a little bit and can
you tell me more about how he came to be
Santa Claus and how that played out when
you were younger? He came to be Santa
Claus when he was 19 years old, when
he was on the USS New York and Brooklyn
Navy Yard. And they said, we're going
to have a party for what they call
disadvantaged children. and somebody said, we
need a Santa Claus, and somebody said,
there's a guy in the engine room that says
he's from Santa Claus. They got him,
they put him up on the ship, I think
it's in here, a terrible beard, a
terrible outfit, and lots of children
gathered around him, and he said, at
that, I made a vow to God that if I lived
through the war, I would do this. So
that's how he did it. However, he was in the
Navy from that time until 1930, I think,
when he got out. And when he came back
here, he immediately did what Dad would
do. He went to visit the postmaster.
And the postmaster was really busy
with letters and Christmas mail. And
he said, oh, he's so busy, he can't do
all that, he has all this mail. So once
again, leadership. He just said, I'm going
to help you, Mr. Phillips. And he
started taking letters in his car, in boxes,
to the American Legion post, to the
VFW, to the Sisters of Ferdinand, the
Priests of St. Minor, typing class at Dale
Holmes, and people answered letters.
These are letters to Santa. That children
had written to Santa. And so that was just
one of the first things. And then I have
pictures of him he was supported by the American
Legion because it's the Santa Claus American
Legion he started the post and so he would
get ready for parades or going out and he
would be dressed as Santa Claus and he never
played it he believed it and he took it so
seriously he wrote a little book, I have
it somewhere How to Be a Real Santa He was
very, he'd be upset if he saw a Santa with
a nasty beard or, and he's saying you don't
ever speak like a regular person when you're out
in public if you're wearing the Santa Claus
suit. You keep your ho, ho, ho voice and
that sort of thing. You don't smoke and
smell like smoke. You don't drink alcohol.
You don't chew gum. You keep your beard white.
You do all these things. and he and another
man had a Santa school and I was there and
he was inducted into the International Santa
Claus Hall of Fame and then I was several
years later as only the second woman which
I really appreciated but anyway that's really
and then when Santa Claus Land was built
Lewis Cook who was Bill Cook's father is the
one that came up and said we need a place
for kids And they asked him to be Santa at
Santa Claus Land. So he officially became
Santa Claus there. And there was a room. It
was a Bavarian building. It's not there. I
mean, it's different now. But it faced
this highway that goes this way. I
don't know numbers. I think it might be 162. But anyway, the first
room was a souvenir shop. The next room was
a dining room selling Christmas dinners.
The next one was a display room where
kids could push buttons and things would go
around and lots of old stuff displayed. And
the next room was what they called the toy
shop where my dad sat at Santa Claus. And
we had cameras taking pictures and kids
lined up. And he was always so careful to
listen for a child's name while they were in.
And then when they came up, oh, James,
and the kids just, oh. And one time he had a
German child. He spoke German. He knew a little
Spanish from being in the war and a
little Italian. And he really made it real,
and he was wonderful. And we'd go
down on Sundays, my mother and the kids. Dad would be Santa.
Bill would be working. For a while I
didn't work that much because I had
small children. But we'd go down to
have lunch with Bill. And then we'd go in
to see Santa, and we'd bring him a hamburger.
He'd go in the back room and eat that one
hamburger and immediately back out. That was
just the way he was. And you know what?
When he was dying, he died when he
was 90 in 1984. My brother died in 83,
and he died in 84. And I had had him at
my house overnight. I was worried, and I was
taking him back home. And he said, Pat,
don't pay too much for one of
those boxes to put me in. That's not
smart. Just any old thing is okay.
I said, okay. And then he said, and
don't let them put in the newspaper that
Santa Claus died. Because they
probably would have. So we made
that an issue. He just really
thought about that all the time, keeping
that faith. keeping. And I think that's
what's so remarkable, why we work so hard
at these letters. They still believe,
at least they act like they
do. And they can look on anything
and see it on TV. I mean, kids will always
tell them at school that there's no Santa.
But I mean, you know, they're just more
everything, everything. And so when somebody
says, my friends say that you're not real.
We say, Santa is real. Santa is forever or
something. And mothers should thank us for
that. But to have them believe is so important,
don't you think? I mean, when you give
that up, you're just really giving up, not
just for the toys, but just, it's such a,
it's a spiritual thing. Yeah, I do
agree, very much. Well, if you could
walk me back even a little bit further with
that, with the Cook family story, how
did they come, they were from Evansville,
is that right? And then Lewis Cook, was
that the first one? So why did they want
to come here, and then how, what's
the early history of the park before
you came on board? Well, there were
two things. Here, in 1935, the big statue
was built by a man from New Harmony
called Carl Barrett. The Candy Castle was
built by a name of Milton Harris, and they
were going to start the first tourism
development in town. They got in a fight,
fight. We have a document down there about
land rights, and they started in 1935. When
I give a tour here I always say Santa
is four years younger than me, but he's
been there since 1935. And they got in a
fight, and the war came along, and
everything went to the war effort. I
lived through that. Everybody went
off either to a factory that made
guns or bullets or ships or whatever,
and it stopped. You just didn't
have business. So there's a picture
down there of this entity here, Santa Claus
Museum and Village, and it says Santa
Claus Park. Mr. Barrett was going to call it
a park, and he was going to develop
things here. And then I guess from 30, when
did the war start? 41, yeah. And it just,
there was nobody here. And so everything
was abandoned. It was just abandoned. It's
all grown up. That big sign that says Santa
Claus Park was gone. The statue has
remained from 35 on. One time somebody
that owned it painted it red, but
it was never red. And so Lewis Cook
was from a family of the three men and
two women. And the men were George,
Lewis, and Albert. And Lewis Cook was
my husband's father. And he married, he
was Catholic, he married the daughter
of a Presbyterian minister, and he
had nine children. And Bill was exactly
middle of nine children, five boys
and four girls. And so he was,
there's a biography of him, you can probably
find it, that his great-grandson
wrote, and he was, once again, an
extraordinary person. At first, he had what
he called a tin shop, and he rode a bicycle
to the tin shop in Evansville, and he made
tin bugles, like during the war, and they sold,
and we had some of them, one of my sons did,
and then that evolved. He rode a bicycle,
that evolved, and in his book that his his
great-grandson wrote, Mead Johnson was
developing a business, pharmacy things. It
would be kind of like Eli Lilly, but on a
smaller scale. And he had Enfamil, which was
a children's formula, but he didn't know
how to make it shelf -stable. Lewis Cook
found a way to make it shelf-stable, which
is not unusual. If you read, it's just amazing
how how this man, the things he did, and
they're still doing, and what my husband
did. It's that DNA. So, Mead Johnson
had a company on the Ohio River. He gave
Lewis Cook some property on the river, and
thanks for the infamil shelf-stable
stuff, and that became George Cook's sons,
because George was the father of Lewis,
George, and Albert. And then that became,
during the war, a business that really
succeeded a lot, making things from steel in
the war effort, and I'd have to research
that again. But that's when they started
growing, because of the war. A lot of companies
did. Evansville was, they had a place
that did something for the bombers, and it
was known as a city. P-47 factory down
there. P-47, that's it. And so that's what
got them then on, and they became mostly
air conditioning. It was carrier
air conditioning. When I married
Bill in 60, they were still
having board meetings with the
daughters and the sons in George
Cookson's building. And it was not large, but they had been
very successful. And two of the
older sons, Bob and Malcolm, had taken
over during the war. Bill went to the Navy. The others, L.J. wasn't old
enough, and so he was the one
that was gone. And so when he
came home, he did a post-graduate
degree at Annapolis. And he and two other
guys, this is a long story, but I'm going
to shorten it. There were eight young
men that were all chosen to come to
Annapolis because they had been Purdue with
engineering, or they had been somewhere
for architecture, and they were going to
be naval architecture or naval engineering
for the war effort. Because you said
Bill had graduated from Purdue. He
had graduated from Purdue. He had a
bachelor's in, I think, mechanical engineering. But then he did
that post-graduate course, and there
were eight men, and all with engineering
or architecture. And three of them
were sent to Pearl Harbor after the attack
because they were to help repair the
ships that were brought back when they were
damaged. And one of those men was
imprisoned by Castro and escaped and formed
a great business and was very, very
successful. The other man was from New Orleans.
He's the architect of the Superdome and
books and art and amazing and Bill
Cook. And those three were so close because
they were together at Pearl Harbor and
Bill would tell me stories about that,
that a ship would come in and they'd say,
you've got 24 hours, you've got 48 hours,
it has to be back out. And they just
did it. They worked until they got it
done so the ship could go back out. Now in
between, obviously they dated Hawaiian
girls, because I have a scrapbook of that,
but they had fun. Yeah. But that was his,
and then when the war was over, he
worked for an admiral in Washington, D
.C., and he got a lot of perks from working
with the admiral. He dated the
admiral's daughter. But I cannot, I'd
have to look. I have his, I have his tag.
I'm giving it to one of my kids. But when
he got out, he came home and wanted to
join his brothers in the business. And he
soon, and this is family businesses, they're
very complicated, decided that there
wasn't a future for him to be, if you see how
innovative and creative he is, he worked
in the advertising department and worked
for them. And so his dad had come in the meantime
in 46 and 45 and said, there's nothing
here for kids. I've got nine kids. You go to
a place called Santa Claus, you want to see
something for kids. So he built that Bavarian
building that had those places and for
my dad being in there. And then Bill
came up here, well the Santa
Claus land was dedicated August
3rd, 1946. And then Bill came
in 47. And that was really news. This
bachelor guy, thirty-some years old, is coming
up from Evansville and he's going to run this
place. And he did. And his mother and
father had even made an apartment in the
main building, and of course, and his sister
did the dollhouse, which is what this
was for a while, this building was a dollhouse
at Holiday World, showed antique dolls,
and so he just, he, and then we got married
in 60, December of 60, and we knew we
had to make it bigger because it couldn't
stay just a kiddie park because you couldn't
have big rides uh it we knew that it wouldn't
it wouldn't grow and neither one of us
were people who could stay stagnant just
the same old way over and over so in 84 we
decided to change the name which made the
whole perception it's holiday world it's
not a children's park it's for everybody
every age of course that took a while but we
got the first when we got the first coaster
that was a big deal so did I answer yes absolutely well and then

Description of the video:

People still call it Santa Claus Land. Oh, we got criticized. Oh, that's terrible. They can't change. And for a long time, we had both words. We'd have Holiday World Santa Claus Land, and we have a sign down there. They were out on the highways. But it wasn't easy. But then we built that first roller coaster. It all just evolved and worked very hard, Michelle. And when you talk about leadership, which maybe you'll get to that, I never thought about it as leadership.
I always thought about it as giving, as contributing, as being an inspiration, or showing how important it is to learn to work, and to be responsible, and to be dependable. And I think my greatest joy was having young kids at Santa Cos Land and Holiday World, because some of them have learned a lot
at home especially if they've been from farms they learn a little more nowadays particularly but when I was there and if I mean I just loved it and as I think about it I organized the cleaning crew everybody had their own broom and dustpan so they were responsible for it it got put on a hook at night that had your name you had your own bottle of what you spray with you had your own paper towels, and you were there on time, you were assigned to a place to be. I walked around with a broom and dustpan all the time. And one of the things I used to give talks for hospitality, which comes from the word hospitalitas, which comes from hospitals and hospice, and it means caring and taking care of. And so I always said to the young people, you don't work for me. We work together. We're a team. And then the other thing is so important, I think, is to respect even a young person that you might think is brash or irresponsible or whatever. If you respect them and take an interest, you can win them, and they will care and they will do and my greatest joy now is that those young people are still coming up to me today and I just I it's amazing well I see Mrs. Cook you told us to say yes ma'am and yes sir I still do it today because you said it and you taught us to look people in the eyes and shake hands and I still do it and one woman that I just knew had potential and she came to my Sachem Award that I got and she told the story about she was 14 or 15, her dad was verbally abusive and that I took her, I really did, I saw she had potential. You can tell, you just, women are good at that and she was getting, the father and she told it in public but she just, she needed support she needed somebody to believe in her She started dating a guy, and I said, okay, if you get pregnant, I'm finished. You just have to be responsible. You're at a good job. You can help yourself now. None of that. Well, they got divorced because she found out it was the wrong person. But again, I said, do you think you could go to college? She did. I said, I will help you. I did. And she got a bachelor's degree. She's very, very, very
successful now. And she always tells people about that. Because I don't know if she would have made it. It was a bad, bad situation. But she learned a lot. She was HR for us for a while. And then somehow she got into real estate. And she was just so successful. But those stories, that's why you do it. I'm not going to be here forever. Whatever. Even with this, Kathleen is wonderful. She's just so good. And do you mean to be a fan here? Yes, I started it.

I had this idea that history should be remembered, and it should be remembered right, and it should be documented, and we should show why it's
history and all that, and we should talk about that whole process. But she's the best. and she's a very, she's a self -starter. She thinks
of things to do. I don't, I don't, I just, Kathleen can go because I won't be here and she may be, my daughter is very interested but right now she's gone with her, she still has kids, haven't been married, haven't had any grandkids, there's just still a lot ahead for her and I have to rely, you have, what I felt like was I had to teach them so I wasn't necessary anymore. Anything I belonged to or did, I always felt that way. I started a thing in the diocese, another woman and I, in the diocese of Evansville, and I was real active. The diocese is a unit in the Catholic Church with a bishop. And a woman in Kentucky said, I do a wisdom program, and it's for senior citizens because they don't get enough attention. Some parishes have clubs, but not everybody. So Bill and I, he went with me. We went over there, and we went to one of their meetings. It was so much fun, and I saw all these senior citizens, and it's free. Everything's free. They come in, they sign, they get a meal, they get entertainment, they do exercise, they have speakers, and it's like 9 to 3. They get tired after 3 o'clock. And I thought, that's a great idea. So Donna and I said, let's start this in Evansville. Well, we did. And she said, well, you have to go to the bishop and tell him, Bishop Gettelfinger, you have to get him to approve. So she sent me to the bishop. So I went to the bishop, told him, he said, well, you have to talk to the presbyterate, which is all the priests
when they come for a meeting. So I had
to talk to all them. and he said and you
have to you have to let them know they don't
won't have any extra work so we took it
over and they bought it and now we have a
meeting in Evansville one in Jasper and one
in Vincennes and they get hundreds and it's
a beautiful day and now I used to MCM I
used to organize with Lent with Donna she's
in a home now but I don't have to do much
and that's the way it should be because people
are doing it because it's a good thing
and it's always a woman mostly once there's
been a man in Vincennes who's been great
but it's continuing so I think one of the
big things in leadership is to know you do
it and you risk something not everything
my husband used to say I told my kids he
said I told the kids don't think everything
I tried that was successful No, I tried
things that didn't work. But try, just
give it a try. So the same way with
lots of things. And so that's one thing
that has been very successful. And I
just got a call from Vincennes. We're having
it in October. Will you be there and will
you speak? And I would say very short, I'm
not supposed to be the thing of the day. They
get their speakers. But just tell a
little history and how glad I am to be. And
there are 100-year-old people there now,
which never used to be. So I don't know why
I'm telling that story, except that I think
I have, when you talk about leadership, I
think in the younger years, I was more into
the form of leadership, like making
procedures and that sort of thing.
And now I'm more into the spirit
of leadership, helping people
become and helping things become, but
then having other people, and you
need other people. When I got that of
Sachem, I think it is, I said, I didn't
do this by myself. You don't do
anything by yourself. I don't like numbers.
I have to have men or people or
whoever likes numbers make the budget or
do what they're going to do, and you have
to have others. And like here, we have such great volunteers. They're just
wonderful, and they have talent
I don't have. And they do
things I can't do, especially now
being older. So you need to
form, relationships are the biggest
part I think of leadership,
relationships and all the rest of it. My big mantra when I
used to give it in talks, I wanted the people
that worked with me, I I needed to be what
I wanted them to be, and I needed to do what
I wanted them to do. That was how I felt
my life should be, which is why I walked
around with a broom and dustpan and clean
toilets and clean tables, and then
you get cooperation. But if you sit at a desk and never show your face, and people
will not do it. I think a very important
lesson, for sure. Well, I definitely want
to talk more about Hollywood World and
how that has developed. But I also am
interested in your early relationship to
Santa Claus and the town, and I think a
of that also starts with your dad. So can
we jump back just a little bit and can
you tell me more about how he came to be
Santa Claus and how that played out when
you were younger? He came to be Santa
Claus when he was 19 years old, when
he was on the USS New York and Brooklyn
Navy Yard. And they said, we're going
to have a party for what they call
disadvantaged children. and somebody said, we
need a Santa Claus, and somebody said,
there's a guy in the engine room that says
he's from Santa Claus. They got him,
they put him up on the ship, I think
it's in here, a terrible beard, a
terrible outfit, and lots of children
gathered around him, and he said, at
that, I made a vow to God that if I lived
through the war, I would do this. So
that's how he did it. However, he was in the
Navy from that time until 1930, I think,
when he got out. And when he came back
here, he immediately did what Dad would
do. He went to visit the postmaster.
And the postmaster was really busy
with letters and Christmas mail. And
he said, oh, he's so busy, he can't do
all that, he has all this mail. So once
again, leadership. He just said, I'm going
to help you, Mr. Phillips. And he
started taking letters in his car, in boxes,
to the American Legion post, to the
VFW, to the Sisters of Ferdinand, the
Priests of St. Minor, typing class at Dale
Holmes, and people answered letters.
These are letters to Santa. That children
had written to Santa. And so that was just
one of the first things. And then I have
pictures of him he was supported by the American
Legion because it's the Santa Claus American
Legion he started the post and so he would
get ready for parades or going out and he
would be dressed as Santa Claus and he never
played it he believed it and he took it so
seriously he wrote a little book, I have
it somewhere How to Be a Real Santa He was
very, he'd be upset if he saw a Santa with
a nasty beard or, and he's saying you don't
ever speak like a regular person when you're out
in public if you're wearing the Santa Claus
suit. You keep your ho, ho, ho voice and
that sort of thing. You don't smoke and
smell like smoke. You don't drink alcohol.
You don't chew gum. You keep your beard white.
You do all these things. and he and another
man had a Santa school and I was there and
he was inducted into the International Santa
Claus Hall of Fame and then I was several
years later as only the second woman which
I really appreciated but anyway that's really
and then when Santa Claus Land was built
Lewis Cook who was Bill Cook's father is the
one that came up and said we need a place
for kids And they asked him to be Santa at
Santa Claus Land. So he officially became
Santa Claus there. And there was a room. It
was a Bavarian building. It's not there. I
mean, it's different now. But it faced
this highway that goes this way. I
don't know numbers. I think it might be 162. But anyway, the first
room was a souvenir shop. The next room was
a dining room selling Christmas dinners.
The next one was a display room where
kids could push buttons and things would go
around and lots of old stuff displayed. And
the next room was what they called the toy
shop where my dad sat at Santa Claus. And
we had cameras taking pictures and kids
lined up. And he was always so careful to
listen for a child's name while they were in.
And then when they came up, oh, James,
and the kids just, oh. And one time he had a
German child. He spoke German. He knew a little
Spanish from being in the war and a
little Italian. And he really made it real,
and he was wonderful. And we'd go
down on Sundays, my mother and the kids. Dad would be Santa.
Bill would be working. For a while I
didn't work that much because I had
small children. But we'd go down to
have lunch with Bill. And then we'd go in
to see Santa, and we'd bring him a hamburger.
He'd go in the back room and eat that one
hamburger and immediately back out. That was
just the way he was. And you know what?
When he was dying, he died when he
was 90 in 1984. My brother died in 83,
and he died in 84. And I had had him at
my house overnight. I was worried, and I was
taking him back home. And he said, Pat,
don't pay too much for one of
those boxes to put me in. That's not
smart. Just any old thing is okay.
I said, okay. And then he said, and
don't let them put in the newspaper that
Santa Claus died. Because they
probably would have. So we made
that an issue. He just really
thought about that all the time, keeping
that faith. keeping. And I think that's
what's so remarkable, why we work so hard
at these letters. They still believe,
at least they act like they
do. And they can look on anything
and see it on TV. I mean, kids will always
tell them at school that there's no Santa.
But I mean, you know, they're just more
everything, everything. And so when somebody
says, my friends say that you're not real.
We say, Santa is real. Santa is forever or
something. And mothers should thank us for
that. But to have them believe is so important,
don't you think? I mean, when you give
that up, you're just really giving up, not
just for the toys, but just, it's such a,
it's a spiritual thing. Yeah, I do
agree, very much. Well, if you could
walk me back even a little bit further with
that, with the Cook family story, how
did they come, they were from Evansville,
is that right? And then Lewis Cook, was
that the first one? So why did they want
to come here, and then how, what's
the early history of the park before
you came on board? Well, there were
two things. Here, in 1935, the big statue
was built by a man from New Harmony
called Carl Barrett. The Candy Castle was
built by a name of Milton Harris, and they
were going to start the first tourism
development in town. They got in a fight,
fight. We have a document down there about
land rights, and they started in 1935. When
I give a tour here I always say Santa
is four years younger than me, but he's
been there since 1935. And they got in a
fight, and the war came along, and
everything went to the war effort. I
lived through that. Everybody went
off either to a factory that made
guns or bullets or ships or whatever,
and it stopped. You just didn't
have business. So there's a picture
down there of this entity here, Santa Claus
Museum and Village, and it says Santa
Claus Park. Mr. Barrett was going to call it
a park, and he was going to develop
things here. And then I guess from 30, when
did the war start? 41, yeah. And it just,
there was nobody here. And so everything
was abandoned. It was just abandoned. It's
all grown up. That big sign that says Santa
Claus Park was gone. The statue has
remained from 35 on. One time somebody
that owned it painted it red, but
it was never red. And so Lewis Cook
was from a family of the three men and
two women. And the men were George,
Lewis, and Albert. And Lewis Cook was
my husband's father. And he married, he
was Catholic, he married the daughter
of a Presbyterian minister, and he
had nine children. And Bill was exactly
middle of nine children, five boys
and four girls. And so he was,
there's a biography of him, you can probably
find it, that his great-grandson
wrote, and he was, once again, an
extraordinary person. At first, he had what
he called a tin shop, and he rode a bicycle
to the tin shop in Evansville, and he made
tin bugles, like during the war, and they sold,
and we had some of them, one of my sons did,
and then that evolved. He rode a bicycle,
that evolved, and in his book that his his
great-grandson wrote, Mead Johnson was
developing a business, pharmacy things. It
would be kind of like Eli Lilly, but on a
smaller scale. And he had Enfamil, which was
a children's formula, but he didn't know
how to make it shelf -stable. Lewis Cook
found a way to make it shelf-stable, which
is not unusual. If you read, it's just amazing
how how this man, the things he did, and
they're still doing, and what my husband
did. It's that DNA. So, Mead Johnson
had a company on the Ohio River. He gave
Lewis Cook some property on the river, and
thanks for the infamil shelf-stable
stuff, and that became George Cook's sons,
because George was the father of Lewis,
George, and Albert. And then that became,
during the war, a business that really
succeeded a lot, making things from steel in
the war effort, and I'd have to research
that again. But that's when they started
growing, because of the war. A lot of companies
did. Evansville was, they had a place
that did something for the bombers, and it
was known as a city. P-47 factory down
there. P-47, that's it. And so that's what
got them then on, and they became mostly
air conditioning. It was carrier
air conditioning. When I married
Bill in 60, they were still
having board meetings with the
daughters and the sons in George
Cookson's building. And it was not large, but they had been
very successful. And two of the
older sons, Bob and Malcolm, had taken
over during the war. Bill went to the Navy. The others, L.J. wasn't old
enough, and so he was the one
that was gone. And so when he
came home, he did a post-graduate
degree at Annapolis. And he and two other
guys, this is a long story, but I'm going
to shorten it. There were eight young
men that were all chosen to come to
Annapolis because they had been Purdue with
engineering, or they had been somewhere
for architecture, and they were going to
be naval architecture or naval engineering
for the war effort. Because you said
Bill had graduated from Purdue. He
had graduated from Purdue. He had a
bachelor's in, I think, mechanical engineering. But then he did
that post-graduate course, and there
were eight men, and all with engineering
or architecture. And three of them
were sent to Pearl Harbor after the attack
because they were to help repair the
ships that were brought back when they were
damaged. And one of those men was
imprisoned by Castro and escaped and formed
a great business and was very, very
successful. The other man was from New Orleans.
He's the architect of the Superdome and
books and art and amazing and Bill
Cook. And those three were so close because
they were together at Pearl Harbor and
Bill would tell me stories about that,
that a ship would come in and they'd say,
you've got 24 hours, you've got 48 hours,
it has to be back out. And they just
did it. They worked until they got it
done so the ship could go back out. Now in
between, obviously they dated Hawaiian
girls, because I have a scrapbook of that,
but they had fun. Yeah. But that was his,
and then when the war was over, he
worked for an admiral in Washington, D
.C., and he got a lot of perks from working
with the admiral. He dated the
admiral's daughter. But I cannot, I'd
have to look. I have his, I have his tag.
I'm giving it to one of my kids. But when
he got out, he came home and wanted to
join his brothers in the business. And he
soon, and this is family businesses, they're
very complicated, decided that there
wasn't a future for him to be, if you see how
innovative and creative he is, he worked
in the advertising department and worked
for them. And so his dad had come in the meantime
in 46 and 45 and said, there's nothing
here for kids. I've got nine kids. You go to
a place called Santa Claus, you want to see
something for kids. So he built that Bavarian
building that had those places and for
my dad being in there. And then Bill
came up here, well the Santa
Claus land was dedicated August
3rd, 1946. And then Bill came
in 47. And that was really news. This
bachelor guy, thirty-some years old, is coming
up from Evansville and he's going to run this
place. And he did. And his mother and
father had even made an apartment in the
main building, and of course, and his sister
did the dollhouse, which is what this
was for a while, this building was a dollhouse
at Holiday World, showed antique dolls,
and so he just, he, and then we got married
in 60, December of 60, and we knew we
had to make it bigger because it couldn't
stay just a kiddie park because you couldn't
have big rides uh it we knew that it wouldn't
it wouldn't grow and neither one of us
were people who could stay stagnant just
the same old way over and over so in 84 we
decided to change the name which made the
whole perception it's holiday world it's
not a children's park it's for everybody
every age of course that took a while but we
got the first when we got the first coaster
that was a big deal so did I answer yes absolutely well and then

Description of the video:

People still call it Santa Claus Land. Oh, we got criticized. Oh, that's terrible. They can't change. And for a long time, we had both words. We'd have Holiday World Santa Claus Land, and we have a sign down there. They were out on the highways. But it wasn't easy. But then we built that first roller coaster. It all just evolved and worked very hard, Michelle. And when you talk about leadership, which maybe you'll get to that, I never thought about it as leadership.
I always thought about it as giving, as contributing, as being an inspiration, or showing how important it is to learn to work, and to be responsible, and to be dependable. And I think my greatest joy was having young kids at Santa Cos Land and Holiday World, because some of them have learned a lot
at home especially if they've been from farms they learn a little more nowadays particularly but when I was there and if I mean I just loved it and as I think about it I organized the cleaning crew everybody had their own broom and dustpan so they were responsible for it it got put on a hook at night that had your name you had your own bottle of what you spray with you had your own paper towels, and you were there on time, you were assigned to a place to be. I walked around with a broom and dustpan all the time. And one of the things I used to give talks for hospitality, which comes from the word hospitalitas, which comes from hospitals and hospice, and it means caring and taking care of. And so I always said to the young people, you don't work for me. We work together. We're a team. And then the other thing is so important, I think, is to respect even a young person that you might think is brash or irresponsible or whatever. If you respect them and take an interest, you can win them, and they will care and they will do and my greatest joy now is that those young people are still coming up to me today and I just I it's amazing well I see Mrs. Cook you told us to say yes ma'am and yes sir I still do it today because you said it and you taught us to look people in the eyes and shake hands and I still do it and one woman that I just knew had potential and she came to my Sachem Award that I got and she told the story about she was 14 or 15, her dad was verbally abusive and that I took her, I really did, I saw she had potential. You can tell, you just, women are good at that and she was getting, the father and she told it in public but she just, she needed support she needed somebody to believe in her She started dating a guy, and I said, okay, if you get pregnant, I'm finished. You just have to be responsible. You're at a good job. You can help yourself now. None of that. Well, they got divorced because she found out it was the wrong person. But again, I said, do you think you could go to college? She did. I said, I will help you. I did. And she got a bachelor's degree. She's very, very, very
successful now. And she always tells people about that. Because I don't know if she would have made it. It was a bad, bad situation. But she learned a lot. She was HR for us for a while. And then somehow she got into real estate. And she was just so successful. But those stories, that's why you do it. I'm not going to be here forever. Whatever. Even with this, Kathleen is wonderful. She's just so good. And do you mean to be a fan here? Yes, I started it.

I had this idea that history should be remembered, and it should be remembered right, and it should be documented, and we should show why it's
history and all that, and we should talk about that whole process. But she's the best. and she's a very, she's a self -starter. She thinks
of things to do. I don't, I don't, I just, Kathleen can go because I won't be here and she may be, my daughter is very interested but right now she's gone with her, she still has kids, haven't been married, haven't had any grandkids, there's just still a lot ahead for her and I have to rely, you have, what I felt like was I had to teach them so I wasn't necessary anymore. Anything I belonged to or did, I always felt that way. I started a thing in the diocese, another woman and I, in the diocese of Evansville, and I was real active. The diocese is a unit in the Catholic Church with a bishop. And a woman in Kentucky said, I do a wisdom program, and it's for senior citizens because they don't get enough attention. Some parishes have clubs, but not everybody. So Bill and I, he went with me. We went over there, and we went to one of their meetings. It was so much fun, and I saw all these senior citizens, and it's free. Everything's free. They come in, they sign, they get a meal, they get entertainment, they do exercise, they have speakers, and it's like 9 to 3. They get tired after 3 o'clock. And I thought, that's a great idea. So Donna and I said, let's start this in Evansville. Well, we did. And she said, well, you have to go to the bishop and tell him, Bishop Gettelfinger, you have to get him to approve. So she sent me to the bishop. So I went to the bishop, told him, he said, well, you have to talk to the presbyterate, which is all the priests
when they come for a meeting. So I had
to talk to all them. and he said and you
have to you have to let them know they don't
won't have any extra work so we took it
over and they bought it and now we have a
meeting in Evansville one in Jasper and one
in Vincennes and they get hundreds and it's
a beautiful day and now I used to MCM I
used to organize with Lent with Donna she's
in a home now but I don't have to do much
and that's the way it should be because people
are doing it because it's a good thing
and it's always a woman mostly once there's
been a man in Vincennes who's been great
but it's continuing so I think one of the
big things in leadership is to know you do
it and you risk something not everything
my husband used to say I told my kids he
said I told the kids don't think everything
I tried that was successful No, I tried
things that didn't work. But try, just
give it a try. So the same way with
lots of things. And so that's one thing
that has been very successful. And I
just got a call from Vincennes. We're having
it in October. Will you be there and will
you speak? And I would say very short, I'm
not supposed to be the thing of the day. They
get their speakers. But just tell a
little history and how glad I am to be. And
there are 100-year-old people there now,
which never used to be. So I don't know why
I'm telling that story, except that I think
I have, when you talk about leadership, I
think in the younger years, I was more into
the form of leadership, like making
procedures and that sort of thing.
And now I'm more into the spirit
of leadership, helping people
become and helping things become, but
then having other people, and you
need other people. When I got that of
Sachem, I think it is, I said, I didn't
do this by myself. You don't do
anything by yourself. I don't like numbers.
I have to have men or people or
whoever likes numbers make the budget or
do what they're going to do, and you have
to have others. And like here, we have such great volunteers. They're just
wonderful, and they have talent
I don't have. And they do
things I can't do, especially now
being older. So you need to
form, relationships are the biggest
part I think of leadership,
relationships and all the rest of it. My big mantra when I
used to give it in talks, I wanted the people
that worked with me, I I needed to be what
I wanted them to be, and I needed to do what
I wanted them to do. That was how I felt
my life should be, which is why I walked
around with a broom and dustpan and clean
toilets and clean tables, and then
you get cooperation. But if you sit at a desk and never show your face, and people
will not do it. I think a very important
lesson, for sure. Well, I definitely want
to talk more about Hollywood World and
how that has developed. But I also am
interested in your early relationship to
Santa Claus and the town, and I think a
of that also starts with your dad. So can
we jump back just a little bit and can
you tell me more about how he came to be
Santa Claus and how that played out when
you were younger? He came to be Santa
Claus when he was 19 years old, when
he was on the USS New York and Brooklyn
Navy Yard. And they said, we're going
to have a party for what they call
disadvantaged children. and somebody said, we
need a Santa Claus, and somebody said,
there's a guy in the engine room that says
he's from Santa Claus. They got him,
they put him up on the ship, I think
it's in here, a terrible beard, a
terrible outfit, and lots of children
gathered around him, and he said, at
that, I made a vow to God that if I lived
through the war, I would do this. So
that's how he did it. However, he was in the
Navy from that time until 1930, I think,
when he got out. And when he came back
here, he immediately did what Dad would
do. He went to visit the postmaster.
And the postmaster was really busy
with letters and Christmas mail. And
he said, oh, he's so busy, he can't do
all that, he has all this mail. So once
again, leadership. He just said, I'm going
to help you, Mr. Phillips. And he
started taking letters in his car, in boxes,
to the American Legion post, to the
VFW, to the Sisters of Ferdinand, the
Priests of St. Minor, typing class at Dale
Holmes, and people answered letters.
These are letters to Santa. That children
had written to Santa. And so that was just
one of the first things. And then I have
pictures of him he was supported by the American
Legion because it's the Santa Claus American
Legion he started the post and so he would
get ready for parades or going out and he
would be dressed as Santa Claus and he never
played it he believed it and he took it so
seriously he wrote a little book, I have
it somewhere How to Be a Real Santa He was
very, he'd be upset if he saw a Santa with
a nasty beard or, and he's saying you don't
ever speak like a regular person when you're out
in public if you're wearing the Santa Claus
suit. You keep your ho, ho, ho voice and
that sort of thing. You don't smoke and
smell like smoke. You don't drink alcohol.
You don't chew gum. You keep your beard white.
You do all these things. and he and another
man had a Santa school and I was there and
he was inducted into the International Santa
Claus Hall of Fame and then I was several
years later as only the second woman which
I really appreciated but anyway that's really
and then when Santa Claus Land was built
Lewis Cook who was Bill Cook's father is the
one that came up and said we need a place
for kids And they asked him to be Santa at
Santa Claus Land. So he officially became
Santa Claus there. And there was a room. It
was a Bavarian building. It's not there. I
mean, it's different now. But it faced
this highway that goes this way. I
don't know numbers. I think it might be 162. But anyway, the first
room was a souvenir shop. The next room was
a dining room selling Christmas dinners.
The next one was a display room where
kids could push buttons and things would go
around and lots of old stuff displayed. And
the next room was what they called the toy
shop where my dad sat at Santa Claus. And
we had cameras taking pictures and kids
lined up. And he was always so careful to
listen for a child's name while they were in.
And then when they came up, oh, James,
and the kids just, oh. And one time he had a
German child. He spoke German. He knew a little
Spanish from being in the war and a
little Italian. And he really made it real,
and he was wonderful. And we'd go
down on Sundays, my mother and the kids. Dad would be Santa.
Bill would be working. For a while I
didn't work that much because I had
small children. But we'd go down to
have lunch with Bill. And then we'd go in
to see Santa, and we'd bring him a hamburger.
He'd go in the back room and eat that one
hamburger and immediately back out. That was
just the way he was. And you know what?
When he was dying, he died when he
was 90 in 1984. My brother died in 83,
and he died in 84. And I had had him at
my house overnight. I was worried, and I was
taking him back home. And he said, Pat,
don't pay too much for one of
those boxes to put me in. That's not
smart. Just any old thing is okay.
I said, okay. And then he said, and
don't let them put in the newspaper that
Santa Claus died. Because they
probably would have. So we made
that an issue. He just really
thought about that all the time, keeping
that faith. keeping. And I think that's
what's so remarkable, why we work so hard
at these letters. They still believe,
at least they act like they
do. And they can look on anything
and see it on TV. I mean, kids will always
tell them at school that there's no Santa.
But I mean, you know, they're just more
everything, everything. And so when somebody
says, my friends say that you're not real.
We say, Santa is real. Santa is forever or
something. And mothers should thank us for
that. But to have them believe is so important,
don't you think? I mean, when you give
that up, you're just really giving up, not
just for the toys, but just, it's such a,
it's a spiritual thing. Yeah, I do
agree, very much. Well, if you could
walk me back even a little bit further with
that, with the Cook family story, how
did they come, they were from Evansville,
is that right? And then Lewis Cook, was
that the first one? So why did they want
to come here, and then how, what's
the early history of the park before
you came on board? Well, there were
two things. Here, in 1935, the big statue
was built by a man from New Harmony
called Carl Barrett. The Candy Castle was
built by a name of Milton Harris, and they
were going to start the first tourism
development in town. They got in a fight,
fight. We have a document down there about
land rights, and they started in 1935. When
I give a tour here I always say Santa
is four years younger than me, but he's
been there since 1935. And they got in a
fight, and the war came along, and
everything went to the war effort. I
lived through that. Everybody went
off either to a factory that made
guns or bullets or ships or whatever,
and it stopped. You just didn't
have business. So there's a picture
down there of this entity here, Santa Claus
Museum and Village, and it says Santa
Claus Park. Mr. Barrett was going to call it
a park, and he was going to develop
things here. And then I guess from 30, when
did the war start? 41, yeah. And it just,
there was nobody here. And so everything
was abandoned. It was just abandoned. It's
all grown up. That big sign that says Santa
Claus Park was gone. The statue has
remained from 35 on. One time somebody
that owned it painted it red, but
it was never red. And so Lewis Cook
was from a family of the three men and
two women. And the men were George,
Lewis, and Albert. And Lewis Cook was
my husband's father. And he married, he
was Catholic, he married the daughter
of a Presbyterian minister, and he
had nine children. And Bill was exactly
middle of nine children, five boys
and four girls. And so he was,
there's a biography of him, you can probably
find it, that his great-grandson
wrote, and he was, once again, an
extraordinary person. At first, he had what
he called a tin shop, and he rode a bicycle
to the tin shop in Evansville, and he made
tin bugles, like during the war, and they sold,
and we had some of them, one of my sons did,
and then that evolved. He rode a bicycle,
that evolved, and in his book that his his
great-grandson wrote, Mead Johnson was
developing a business, pharmacy things. It
would be kind of like Eli Lilly, but on a
smaller scale. And he had Enfamil, which was
a children's formula, but he didn't know
how to make it shelf -stable. Lewis Cook
found a way to make it shelf-stable, which
is not unusual. If you read, it's just amazing
how how this man, the things he did, and
they're still doing, and what my husband
did. It's that DNA. So, Mead Johnson
had a company on the Ohio River. He gave
Lewis Cook some property on the river, and
thanks for the infamil shelf-stable
stuff, and that became George Cook's sons,
because George was the father of Lewis,
George, and Albert. And then that became,
during the war, a business that really
succeeded a lot, making things from steel in
the war effort, and I'd have to research
that again. But that's when they started
growing, because of the war. A lot of companies
did. Evansville was, they had a place
that did something for the bombers, and it
was known as a city. P-47 factory down
there. P-47, that's it. And so that's what
got them then on, and they became mostly
air conditioning. It was carrier
air conditioning. When I married
Bill in 60, they were still
having board meetings with the
daughters and the sons in George
Cookson's building. And it was not large, but they had been
very successful. And two of the
older sons, Bob and Malcolm, had taken
over during the war. Bill went to the Navy. The others, L.J. wasn't old
enough, and so he was the one
that was gone. And so when he
came home, he did a post-graduate
degree at Annapolis. And he and two other
guys, this is a long story, but I'm going
to shorten it. There were eight young
men that were all chosen to come to
Annapolis because they had been Purdue with
engineering, or they had been somewhere
for architecture, and they were going to
be naval architecture or naval engineering
for the war effort. Because you said
Bill had graduated from Purdue. He
had graduated from Purdue. He had a
bachelor's in, I think, mechanical engineering. But then he did
that post-graduate course, and there
were eight men, and all with engineering
or architecture. And three of them
were sent to Pearl Harbor after the attack
because they were to help repair the
ships that were brought back when they were
damaged. And one of those men was
imprisoned by Castro and escaped and formed
a great business and was very, very
successful. The other man was from New Orleans.
He's the architect of the Superdome and
books and art and amazing and Bill
Cook. And those three were so close because
they were together at Pearl Harbor and
Bill would tell me stories about that,
that a ship would come in and they'd say,
you've got 24 hours, you've got 48 hours,
it has to be back out. And they just
did it. They worked until they got it
done so the ship could go back out. Now in
between, obviously they dated Hawaiian
girls, because I have a scrapbook of that,
but they had fun. Yeah. But that was his,
and then when the war was over, he
worked for an admiral in Washington, D
.C., and he got a lot of perks from working
with the admiral. He dated the
admiral's daughter. But I cannot, I'd
have to look. I have his, I have his tag.
I'm giving it to one of my kids. But when
he got out, he came home and wanted to
join his brothers in the business. And he
soon, and this is family businesses, they're
very complicated, decided that there
wasn't a future for him to be, if you see how
innovative and creative he is, he worked
in the advertising department and worked
for them. And so his dad had come in the meantime
in 46 and 45 and said, there's nothing
here for kids. I've got nine kids. You go to
a place called Santa Claus, you want to see
something for kids. So he built that Bavarian
building that had those places and for
my dad being in there. And then Bill
came up here, well the Santa
Claus land was dedicated August
3rd, 1946. And then Bill came
in 47. And that was really news. This
bachelor guy, thirty-some years old, is coming
up from Evansville and he's going to run this
place. And he did. And his mother and
father had even made an apartment in the
main building, and of course, and his sister
did the dollhouse, which is what this
was for a while, this building was a dollhouse
at Holiday World, showed antique dolls,
and so he just, he, and then we got married
in 60, December of 60, and we knew we
had to make it bigger because it couldn't
stay just a kiddie park because you couldn't
have big rides uh it we knew that it wouldn't
it wouldn't grow and neither one of us
were people who could stay stagnant just
the same old way over and over so in 84 we
decided to change the name which made the
whole perception it's holiday world it's
not a children's park it's for everybody
every age of course that took a while but we
got the first when we got the first coaster
that was a big deal so did I answer yes absolutely well and then