Pat Koch

Marino:            I will just state for the record then that my name is Michella Marino, and I am interviewing Patricia “Pat” Koch. Is that how you pronounce your last name?

Koch:               Koch, yes.

Marino:            Okay, and we are in person at the Santa Claus Museum and Village in Santa Claus, Indiana. Today's date is Saturday, July 19th, 2025, and so for our Tobias Leadership Center interviews, I want to begin by getting your permission on record to record the interview and transcribe it and donate it. So I'm going to read this brief paragraph here.

                        I want to begin by asking, do I have your permission to record this interview, to transcribe the interview, and to deposit the recording and the transcription with the IU Indianapolis Special Collections and Archives, where the  recording and transcription may be used by patrons, and which includes the posting of all or part of the recording and transcription to the website of the IU Indianapolis Special Collections and Archives, and also to deposit the recording and transcription with the Tobias Center to be used for the same purposes?

Koch:               Yes, you have my permission.

Marino:            Okay, thank you. And then I'm just going to read a brief biographical statement for the listener before we dive into the full interview.

                        Pat Yellig Koch was born and raised in Southern Indiana in Mariah Hill. She graduated from Dale High School and earned a bachelor's degree in nursing. She became a sister with the Daughters of Charity, St. Vincent de Paul, and worked in hospitals in St. Louis, New Orleans, and Chicago through the Daughters of Charity. She eventually returned to her hometown, married Bill Koch, and raised five children. She was also a co-founder of and played an integral role in the development of Holiday World and the town of Santa Claus. Her father, Jim Yellig, was Santa Claus for over five decades, which is how Pat first earned the moniker Santa's Daughter, but later earned the title Santa's Chief Elf through her work in Santa Claus. She continues to oversee the answering of tens of thousands of children's letters to Santa that arrive in Santa Claus, Indiana each year. Her hard work, steadfast leadership, and commitment and service to her community and its history have earned her numerous awards and commendations throughout her life.

                        Let's just dive in with your childhood and early years. When and where were you born?

Koch:               I was born in Mariah Hill at home. I was told by my mother in 1931, August 1931. I was told by my mother that I was born feet first with the cord wrapped around my neck, that she was tied to the bed, and never let me forget how terrible it was. And then when I would get in trouble as a teenager, which I did sometimes, she would say, in German, my mother was from a real German family, very blunt and very tough and very honest and hardworking, all those things, “You were backward when you were born, and you're still backward.” And people are shocked when I say that, but it's true. She would say that to me. And you can tell it really bothered me. (laughs)

Marino:            Right, right. What were your parents' names?

Koch:               My mother was Isabel Frances Henrietta Schue, S-C-H-U-E. I have to mention my grandmother, Apollonia Schue, who – we’ll go into people that you idolize, and that was my grandma. During the first flu epidemic, her husband, Adam, my grandfather, passed away with the flu when she was living on a very poor farm out in the country with seven small children. He passed away in the flu epidemic. I've been to that space where her cabin was, and how she survived there, I have no idea. One boy and six girls. And then after two years, she was a smart woman, she moved into the town of Mariah Hill to live with her mother, probably for her just to be able to live and to have some help. And her mother was Magdalena. So she was my first inspiration. She too, tough, balled me out, told me when she was mad at me, but so hardworking. And obviously, I mean, took in eggs from the farmers, cleaned the church. I had to help her clean the church. I never knew how much she got paid. I don't know if there was social security. This would have been in the 40s. And we took turns, the girl cousins stayed with her at night. We all have stories. We all have stories. But anyway, she's I think my first mentor idol of a strong woman. I found out many, many years later from a cousin that my grandmother had been illegitimate. She had been born in Mariah Hill with no father around. People have done research and think it was a traveling medicine show that brought grandma into the world. So in our ancestry, we're a little bit Greek. So maybe that's it. But anyway, that's part of that story. My mother was Isabel Frances Henrietta Schue. My father was Raymond Joseph Yellig. He was always called Santa Jim because he was the last of eight. And there's a big gap between him and his older sisters and brothers. And his sisters babied him and called him their little Jimmy. And he got the name Jim, and his name Jim is nowhere in his name. It's Raymond Joseph. He went by R.J. sometimes. And he always went by Santa Jim. Nobody knows that his name was Raymond Joseph. His father was Daniel Joseph and that's how he got that name.

Marino:            Was your father's side, you mentioned German ancestry, where were they from originally? Or how did they get to this area?

Koch:               Both sides were from probably Alsace-Lorraine, which sometimes is German and sometimes French. Most all of them came down through Pittsburgh. There are a lot of German names in this area. There are still people speaking some German. I take Duolingo every day because my grandma taught me all these little songs and little sayings. But to speak it, and of course to speak real German is not the same as Mariah Hill German or any German around here. So I thought, I want to know. Every morning I take a Duolingo and I'm learning. Like for instance, in Mariah Hill, a potato was a grumbehr, which means ground berry. The real name is kartoffeln. I just met, I was called and asked to meet with some professors from the University of Augsburg, Germany, who are doing research on how the German language evolved in the United States.

Marino:            That’s really interesting.

Koch:               And they say you can tell, like in Cincinnati, which is a big… what part of Germany they came from by the words, different words they use compared to the real words. German's a very guttural language. You have to… (makes sound) I make a lot of jokes about one of the words, which as I was reading, I've read a lot, a lot, a lot of World War II because I grew up during World War II. And in that one book, and I'll say this on my recording, I was reading it and the SS stormtrooper was yelling at a German prisoner in Camp Auschwitz. And he said, “Du arschloch.” That's a word that was used in Mariah Hill a lot. I stood up and laughed out loud in my house. That word means asshole. So I went to the local bar and walked along, and all these guys sitting there and I said, “Do you guys know what arschloch means?” “Hell yes, my dad called me that all the time. My uncle, my grandfather…” I mean, they all knew that word, because that was typical to just yell at you and call you whatever.

Marino:            That is really funny. Well, look at Duolingo helping you out now too.

Koch:               I get balled out by it, you missed your lesson yesterday, just saying. Well, some days I'm busy.

Marino:            Yeah, sorry, sorry. Oh my goodness. Well, tell me more about your parents and what they did for a living.

Koch:               Well, you know, my dad was a veteran of the First World War. He was in the service 14 years. But what happened was that he got married and he had a son, my brother. He came home, I'm told, for his mother's funeral, I would have to go look what year that was, but that he said, “Oh, this is where I want to raise my children.” And so Mom and Dad had lived here, he had gotten out of the Navy and they were living in Chicago and he owned a roadhouse during Prohibition. They told stories about the kegs of beer being delivered, people with guns and in the middle of the night and things. I have pictures of them on the lake, Lake Michigan, they spent time there. My brother was born there in a Mother Cabrini Hospital. Then he came home and saw the town he grew up in. His father was a blacksmith and they were prosperous. I have   pictures of the family. The women are dressed beautifully, these mutton sleeves and long dresses and the men in ties and on a rug and Jimmy standing in the middle between his mother and dad, all the grown-up behind him. And they were prosperous. Daniel Joseph Yellig, I have his blacksmith record. It’s a whole book with wonderful records of how much a box of nails cost and how much a plow or to shoe a horse or whatever. And all the names of people who lived around here. I think my dad had it and I got it, but that’s a wonderful piece of history. It’s just amazing. So he did well. His blacksmith shop, I know where it was situated in Mariah Hill. My mother grew up in a much more poor family out in the woods. Her father had passed away. They moved back into town, and then my mother went to work as a nanny and a housekeeper in Evansville for a doctor, Dr. Reinhart, he’s deceased. They had one son and he loved her, and my mother talked about him all the time. He called her his Bella, Bella for Isabel, and in later years they visited, which she just loved. I’d love to know which house it was because in Evansville there’s a historic part with beautiful big homes, and I’m sure it was like that. But then when they moved back to Mariah Hill, dad had to have something to do to make a living, and he had had what he called a roadhouse in Chicago. So he built the Diamond Tavern, which I have pictures of me standing in front of that as a little girl. It was a little wooden structure. And then, I don’t know what year but I know he built the first chateau in Mariah Hill. They just asked me… one of the men working here said, “People all ask why does this name chateau in Mariah Hill?” I said it’s because my dad built the first chateau and that he had been in World War I in France and he saw chateaus and thought they were beautiful. So he built it with that kind of architecture. So he had that restaurant and my mother would help out with, they would have like bridge clubs from Dale and she would do the cooking. My brother and I had to work there from a very early age, especially in the mornings. We'd have to go and sweep the floor, fill the beer box, do things there. And then during World War II, my dad went to work in Evansville as superintendent of the shipyard and my mother christened an LST. You know what LSTs are?

Marino:            Yes.

Koch:               I have a whole book of that, which was a great honor because he would accompany the LSTs to New Orleans and hand them over to the Navy.

Marino:            I do know what an LST is, but maybe for someone listening who doesn't, those are the landing ships, right?

Koch:               Landing ship tanks. They were very important in Normandy in that invasion. They had big ramps so they could hold tanks, whatever, and many soldiers were killed. I've been there to visit, which is heartbreaking to see that graveyard. It really is. So he spent… you know, at wartime. And so <om ran the restaurant and I was in grade school, my brother in high school. We had to close at 10 o'clock at night. It had to be dark. There was rationing. And she did take care of it, but business, well, what I grew up with was soldiers coming home, sitting up at the bar, talking, and then finding out they got killed. There were a lot of fatalities. There really were. It's just amazing. A woman across town, it was another restaurant. At one time, there were three bars in Mariah Hill, three. And it was a different bar. And her son was the first son killed. And they got a gold star in their window. So that was really educational, although I was so young. I was born in ‘31. So in ‘41 was Pearl Harbor. I was in grade school with sisters. We knew there was a war and we knew that things were rationed, but it didn't affect me that much, except my dad being gone all week, and that we'd have to drive to Dale when he carpooled back to Dale, and we'd pick him up and he'd spend the weekend at home. And my dad was away, that was the big thing about that. So Mom never had a job as such. And she never was Mrs. Claus. She cooked and kept him and took care of his clothes. There's a picture of a Santa suit on the wash line, which is just darling. But it just wasn't her personality. He was an outgoing takeover kind of guy. I think I have more of his DNA. My mother was more private and did the things like having the quilting parties and cooking for German cooking parties. But she belonged to different clubs and all. And actually, dad started the American Legion. The Koch family donated the land, and they would have weddings there. And my mother engineered all those weddings for like 300 people, organized them. They would have wash tubs full of food, good food. And she worked so hard. But she had a habit of then being so tired that she got sick and didn't feel well. But anyway, she never worked. But dad had The Chateau. And then after he sold that, he became the service officer for the veterans. And I think he's my model for service because he didn't even get a pension because he was only in 14 years. But he worked getting pensions for veterans. And at the museum, we have his big old dresser, not a dresser, a cabinet, where he had all these veterans, what they did in the service. And he got pensions for ones that never had pensions before. That's how he worked for people. He also became a, oh, they had a name, excise man. He would drive around. My mom would accompany him and would check on like if they had a license for beer or wine and if they were serving it and didn't have a license and things like that. But then they retired. If you see The Chateau in Mariah Hill, it's on Highway 62, which is the old way to Louisville. Next door is a red brick house that he built in ‘30. So I was born in a white house down the road, but I lived in this other house all my life. It's the only one I know. Somebody else lives there now. But it was a very unusual house because the houses there were all white, board, whatever, wooden, big old white houses. And he had a red brick house and it had a bathroom. It had a bathroom with a bathtub and a toilet and a sink. It was talked about in town because it was a little much for that area at the time. But that was him.

Marino:            Well, that's a little bit funny that he had a roadhouse during Prohibition and then worked excise later. Did he ever talk about that?

Koch:               They always talked about the Prohibition time. Yeah, they did. But yeah, it is strange, isn't it? Well, and here's another story about that. The excise men came to visit The Chateau when I was a little girl. And many, many times after school, I somehow don't think my brother did this, but I would sit in the rocking chair in the corner and wait till they closed up. We didn't have homework. We did our work at school. And I'd be sitting there and Dad would say, “Patti,” and I knew exactly what happened. The excise men, they had driven up outside. Of course, they had a nice car. They were in suits. They were not in a wagon with horses. He knew who they were. My cue was to go in the kitchen, and in the kitchen -- he had a beer license, but he didn't have a liquor license -- was a bottle of liquor. And my job was to pick that up, run out the back door to my house and get rid of it. (laughs)

Marino:            That is so funny.

Koch:               And I knew that.

Marino:            Yeah, he trained you well, right? Oh, my goodness. We'll certainly come back to your dad here in a bit. You've mentioned your brother a couple times. What was his name and how many years were between the two of you?

Koch:               He was Raymond Joseph Yellig, Jr. and he was three years older. I was born on August 14, 1931. He was born on August 18, 1928. And he was delivered in a hospital, Mother Cabrini. I was delivered at home. Of course he was the apple of everybody's eye. But then when Dad moved down here… He was more introverted. He was in high school when I was in high school, Dale High School, I guess one year or maybe two. And I would embarrass him terribly because I just loved the basketball games and I would start the cheers from up in the crowd and then I got elected cheerleader. So I'm down there doing these cheers for Dale High School and shouting, and he'd come home and say, “Grandma, you wouldn't believe what she did tonight.” It was always, he would tell on me, something I would do. We were complete opposites. Very much so. His story is, because of religion, this part of the world was very Catholic, very Roman Catholic and you were not to marry a non-Catholic. He was dating a friend of mine who was a cheerleader. We were great friends. Well, around here it was the girls from the campground which there's still a Santa Claus campground. And that was all Methodist. We were the people from the Catholics from Mariah Hill. My brother dated this girl in high school, happy, and I loved her. My mom and dad would take us on Legion trips, which were wonderful. I got to go to Miami, Florida, all over with the Legion, which most young people in Mariah Hill. But we took this girl since she was my brother's girlfriend on some of our trips, and she and I were great friends. But her father especially said, “My daughter will not marry a Catholic.” And he came to our house and said that, and the next day my brother joined the Navy and left home. He followed in his father's footsteps. So he was in the Navy 20-some years, became a chief petty officer and wasn't home a lot. Of course, my mother just… He was the pet because he wasn't there and I was there. Well, I was gone too, so there was a period of time that neither one of us was home, which is not good. But a neighbor adopted my mother and father and she had children. Those children filled in until I came back home. But anyway, then Ray retired. He had a restaurant in San Diego with another Navy veteran and then he decided to come back to Mariah Hill. And he worked for us at the park. Then he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and he passed away in six weeks. He died in 1983. I stayed with him and his widow. They didn't have any children. They were older when they married. It was his second marriage. And I learned so much from him as he was dying and spent the whole time with him and her because she was just devastated. And so then I was alone. I had no other brothers or sisters and took over the care of my mother and father. And I wish I had another sibling who could help.

Marino:            Yeah, sure. You hinted at this a little bit with your brother's story. And I know my grandmother grew up Catholic in eastern Indiana in the 1930s. And I know that they faced a lot of discrimination from that. And I was just curious, especially with the Klan in Indiana as well, did you experience other discrimination or what was that like growing up where maybe Catholic was not the majority?

Koch:               You know, the discrimination was there as an organization, but since we went to Dale High School from all these different communities, the friendships… and that’s what hurt. And then also falling in love with someone that your parents or the priest or somebody said you couldn’t marry, or you shouldn’t. And that was just really hard. It was very bad. It was very bad. That friend that my brother dated, they were so happy together. And she married and divorced, and he married and divorced. I think they loved each other. She’s still alive and we talk every once in a while on the phone. But it was not… That is not Christianity, is my point. I mean to have this hatred. I mean, if… Jesus lived and Jesus forgave and took in everybody. But that’s the way it was. It’s getting better, but it’s still… we’re all very in our place, and that’s it. Also an aside, when my husband and I developed Christmas Lake Village, and we’ll talk about that, he was so visionary. I told somebody this yesterday. I’m trying to write that history. You know about Christmas Lake Village. It’s a gated community. Now it’s probably 2,500 people with underground – no poles with electricity, developed in 1964.

Marino:            Oh my goodness.

Koch:               Yeah. The other thing he did, he wanted one church for all faiths to come to and worship in one place. He got the bishop in, the abbot from St. Meinrad, different pastors. They had meetings at our house where I was. It was a wonderful idea. It didn't fly. You know, the abbot and the bishop were on, “Okay, we'll try this. This might work.” And it was called an ecumenical, that we were all the same. But to have that, well, I call it God's courage to even suggest that. And it's in some of the books I have. It really did happen.

Marino:            Wow, that's amazing. That's probably a story in itself.

Koch:               But it was hard. It was very hard on us because of the friendships and that we fell in love with people. And then the strange thing is like my mother, when Dad, when we had the American Legion, they had an American Legion auxiliary. I just told you about the dinners. All these women from Santa Claus, because it's here in Santa Claus, they worked together with my mother to get these… Individually, we all worked together, but I guess dogmatically we couldn't. I don't know.

Marino:            Yeah, that's a shame. That is really fascinating. Well, can you tell me a little bit more about your childhood and the schools you attended and what it was like growing up in this area?

Koch:               Well, the school I attended was Mariah Hill Catholic School, but it was a public school staffed by two Benedictine sisters from Ferdinand. I got a great education, really and truly. And you tell these stories about sisters hitting people with rulers. You've heard those stories, surely. I never saw that, never saw it, but I guess it happened. I had Sister Mary Helen, grade one to four, and Sister Mary Hildegard, grades five to eight, downstairs one to four, upstairs five to eight. So the education, those women made their own… I remember having a piece of cardboard that she drew a rosary on and there were holes. So when we got 100 in spelling, you could fill the hole or you could draw a picture or you could do something and your name was put on the board. It was a really, really good education. Classes of seven, 10, even farm kids that came in to school. We went to mass every morning, walked up a hill in the cold weather and had mass. We learned to sing Latin. I learned, I love to sing -- I can't anymore because I'm older -- but sing Latin, learn Latin. We sang some German songs during the war, that was forbidden. I just took a lady out yesterday for lunch and she said, “We still sing that Maria Hilf.” Maria hilf means Mary help and the name of the church is Mary Help of Christians. That's how Mariah Hill got a name. Maria Hilf was changed into Mariah Hill.

Marino:            That's interesting. Yeah, exactly. Another piece of history. So we played outside, tag, ball, prisoner's base. Inside in the winter, something with fruit, upset the fruit basket. You had to choose a fruit and then somebody in the middle had to… you know that game? We just made up games and played and then went home at night. And there were enough children in the village that we'd meet down at the shed across from my best friend's house and play Andy Over, which meant you threw a ball over this shed and they caught it and then they threw it back to you. And if it wasn’t going to make it over, we'd yell, kopenec (spelling??), which means won't come. See, part of the German was still there. Kopenec (spelling??), it's just part of your life. And we'd play baseball outside. Finally got a bicycle. I have a picture with a bicycle. Sundays would be mass where you would sing at high mass in the choir. The priest's housekeeper played the organ, and I learned beautiful music and loved to sing. And then you'd go home. The Chateau wasn't open on Sundays, not officially, I think it was sometimes. (laughs) But in the afternoon you would have Vespers, which is another form of prayer. And we sang for Vespers. And then as soon as Vespers were over, we went to the local ball field because there was a Mariah Hill Yankee ball team that played and my dad sponsored part of that. And everybody would meet at the ball field. And we were the young girls, you know, waving at the ball players. And one day, well, there were three of us, Jeannie, who's died, Joanne, who's died, and me. And we were close, the three of us. We loved to dance. We loved to go to ball games. We just had fun. Now, some of our friends lived on farms and they couldn't all come in. And the farm girls quit school at 16 because they had to help at home. And the story about that is I would take my lunch to school, even though I lived in town, and my friend Pauline Kern would bring homemade bread and I had baker's bread, and we would trade because I wanted homemade and she wanted baker's bread. And I never forgot that. It's just, it's so strange, isn't it? Anyway, Pauline quit high school at 16 because it was a big family with big farms. So we all went to the ball game in Mariah Hill, which is German. There would also always be a pickup truck at the ball game with beer, lots of beer. As soon as the ball game was over, the young men would meet at the truck and have beer. Then they would go home or wherever, I guess, people took one bath a week in my days, washed their hair one day, one bath. I guess everybody smelled the same. (laughs) But anyway, that's just the way it was. And when I stayed with my grandmother, she had an outhouse. We didn't even have an inside toilet and it was okay. It was so cold. It was so cold. It was in a closet. It was so cold. And getting out of bed at her house, it was a linoleum floor, oh, and that floor barefoot, it was so cold because she’d let the fire go out in the potbelly stove. But where was I? Okay, so they'd go home and get ready and then everybody would go to a dance on Sunday night at Billy News (spelling??), which the building is still there. In the summertime, it was outside under the stars; and the winter, it was inside. We did the jitterbug and we had a wonderful band. Sometimes you had a date and sometimes you didn't. And I think the miracle of that time, and I tell this all the time, is how we didn't have cars. Now kids have cars when they're in high school. We didn't have a car. My dad had one car and a nice car. But if we wanted to go to Billy News (spelling??), we had to get a ride or start walking. And if you started walking, somebody would pick you up. And you usually knew who that person was. But we just lived like that. And then we didn't have a ride back home. So we just had to know that we'd find a way back home. The same thing happened at Dale High School basketball games. My mom and dad were busy in The Chateau. We had a post office in Mariah Hill. Now they don't, did for several years. And I would go to the post office, walk over at cattycorner from The Chateau, get in the postal carrier's truck, and ride to Dale with him to be able to go to the ball game. I didn't know the man. I had no idea who he was. And then at night, I had to find a way back home. And my friend Dottie, who's still alive, said, because her mother was the sweetest lady. And if we couldn't get a ride home, we knew we could go to Dottie's house. And she said her mother said, “I never know how many feet I'm going to see in that bed.” But then the next day we'd have to get a ride home some way. I'd go to mass at Dale and then try to find a way home. It was amazing. Like we say, we didn't lock our houses, we didn't lock our cars. And there was a man in Mariah Hill, I guess he was homeless. I know he was homeless. And he just walked around in town and painted for people. In my mother's house on cabinets in the kitchen, he made things in the corners with a teeny tiny brush. So he must have been… But he'd sleep in barns and people would feed him. And he got in the creek, I guess, to wash. And he never touched a person. Nobody was ever scared of him. You know what I think about it? It was so free. It wasn't worry-proof, but it was so easy. And even our parents not to worry about where we were.

Marino:            Yeah, I can't imagine.

Koch:               But everybody knew somebody was going to take care of you, that you were going to be okay.

Marino:            Well, I think that speaks to a sense of community. How big was Mariah Hill or even Dale? 

Koch:               They were small. I guess… there was never a population… I guess… Somebody has built apartments there now, a young man, so people are living… I think there are more people than there ever were probably. And most of the population, I'd say not most, but a lot of the population were farmers, not in town, but out of town, in every direction. And I remember when I got my bicycle that this one guy's father stopped at The Chateau to get a beer and his son was sitting on the wagon outside with the horses. And I rode past on my bike and later he wrote me a note, “You look so pretty on the bicycle,” (laughs). You know, here’s somebody sitting with horses in front of the… When we graduated from eighth grade, and there was a lot of alcohol. We were German. A lot of beer. They made their own. They made their own wine. It was just part of the culture. If you had a party, it was either a two-keg or three-keg party. Growing up, one of my high schools friend’s father made dandelion wine out of dandelions for our eighth grade party. We were going to go out in one of the woods from out of town, and there were seven of us or six at that time, he said, “I brought dandelion wine.” We’re eighth graders. And I was young because I had skipped a grade. I passed that up. That was really important to my life. But that’s awful, that’s terrible. Nobody got drunk. I don’t know. But then I got poison ivy and my mother had to take of it. “Where’d you get that poison ivy?” (laughs) And it was at that party.

Marino:            That’s really funny.

Koch:               When were in second grade or had finished first grade, Sister Mary Helen said that she was going to skip three of us ahead. It was Jeannie, my good friend. And her history, her mother died when she was a few months old, so the older sisters just kept… Her dad had a large store in town and had a beautiful home with an office and a safe, and they were prosperous. But he lost everything in the crash. He went into a depression and their lives changed completely, and then he died. And so the children were left at home. But Jeannie was really smart. Her name was Eugenia May and she’s still so dear to me. We were just such good friends. What was I going to tell you about that?

Marino:            Skipping the grade, I think.

Koch:               Yeah, we called her Jean, even though she was Eugenia May. So Jean, myself, and Donald Dilger. Donald became a Benedictine priest. He was very intelligent. He was very quiet, never dated, got through high school, joined the seminary, and became a priest. He's still in Evansville in a home. And he I think could read Hebrew and Greek and had a great education. Very smart man. I'm not dumb, but I'm not as smart as Donald. Jeannie married a local guy and worked in different businesses. But that made us a whole year younger than everybody else. Jean's birthday was in March, and I was the youngest one in a class of 55 who graduated 77 years ago this year in the class of ‘48. I was the youngest one. I graduated when I was 16, which is way too young. It wasn't good. It really wasn't. We weren't mature enough or physically even, whatever. But we survived. He became a priest. Jeannie married happily and had a nice family. And I went on to become a Sister and get an education, so we made it.

Marino:            Well, I want to certainly talk more about that. But you had mentioned earlier, certainly, about your grandmother and your father as well. Did you have other role models as a child and then young adult? I guess, what was it that made them stand out as role models? Was that connected to leadership in your mind at that time?

Koch:               You know, when I knew I was going to be interviewed for this, I thought, I never thought of leadership. I always just thought of doing things because they needed to be done. And I admired those people, and one of those was my father. And you said young adulthood. Of course, my young adulthood was in the Daughters of Charity. Here's that story, which I've always, my life, I knew I wanted an education. And in my day, I went to see the principal of the high school when I graduated. There were four boys who were going to IU out of our class. No girls, all boys. And I said, “I would like to go to college.” Now, my mother and father had gone to sixth grade. They had no interest in it. It didn't occur to them, I don't think. And he said, “Why would a girl want to go to college?” And I walked out of there thinking, I have to go. I wanted more. I don't really understand it myself, but I just knew I wanted more. The town of Mariah Hill was a wonderful little town, but I knew that you had to do something else to get out of there. And you came back, but I wanted to grow. So I thought, nursing, I can do that. I can get a ride to Dale, get on the Greyhound bus in Dale, enroll myself in nursing, which is exactly what I did. And when I think about it, I think, where did I get that courage to do that by myself? And I went, at St. Mary's Hospital in Evansville, run by the Daughters of Charity, and it was orientation, and I fainted, probably stress, probably just like, oh my gosh, what am I doing here? Nobody knows.

Marino:            Were you aware of that hospital before? How did you even know to get there?

Koch:               That hospital I knew about, yes. And I knew that you could get on the Greyhound bus. It was on First Avenue, and he would let you out, and you could walk. I don't know how I knew that. My mother had been in that hospital, and I knew the sisters were there. So I enrolled myself. I got accepted. And that was really, that is so amazing. There are two things. You know how you say, who wrote the thing about… and the roads converge, and I took a different road, and that made all the difference?

Marino:            It was Robert Frost, wasn’t it?

Koch:               That is so true, isn't it?

Marino:            Yeah.

Koch:               That just, why did I know? Because I was dating a boy since sophomore, junior, senior, and he went to college at IU. And I didn't. I went to Evansville. And I loved nursing. I loved it. And I admired the sisters at Daughters of Charity so much, mainly because the Benedictine sisters were so smart, but they had on that long, covered their face, and you never saw their arms. And these were women nursing. They wore white when they were nursing. They were happy. They were educated. They were educated. Well, those sisters that taught me were, no, at first they were not. They were just sent out to teach, but then they learned later they had to. But I just was, they were fun. They would say silly things, and they were holy. We had mass. And so that was probably one, I know it was… Most of all, they were women who were educated and who were bosses. And it wasn't like being a boss, but in charge. In charge. And doing it well. Doing it very well, happily. See, all this I think is so interesting. The woman who ran the hospital in the Daughters of Charity, her title was Sister Servant. Vincent de Paul taught service to the poor, the outcast, the homeless, all of that. I was in nurses training one year in Evansville. I admired one of the sisters in the operating room so much. And I did a retreat with a priest called a Passionist Priest, and he was so charismatic. He had the leather belt. He was barefoot in a pair of sandals. And he talked about giving your life to other people, serving, especially as a religious person. And I thought, I think I'd like to do that. You know, I want to be a nurse. But I just, and I was dating a non-Catholic boy, and I knew that wasn't going to go anywhere, even though we were very close. But that was wrong, so I couldn't continue that. And so I just made up my mind that was going to be my path. And my mother screamed and cried, and oh, it was awful. My dad understood because he himself was a servant. He really did that. He served people. And so I did it. The sisters got my clothes ready. I gave all my clothes away that I had at the nursing school, got on a train by myself, and went to St. Louis to what they called the postulatum, which was, you were a postulant. And you wore a little thing on your head and a long black outfit, but, you know, no habit. It was just a black cape. That was almost six months of that. Then I went to seminary, and seminary was a year, and that was really tough. That was so tough. It was like the service. You sit until she goes like this (knocks on table), and then you know you can maybe stand, and you stand until she goes like this (knocks on table), and then you kneel. We talked only at recreation twice a day, not at meals unless it was a big feast day. And I learned that you can do that. You can do it. It's hard. And sit in a chapel with no air and no fan in these wool outfits and sweat till it runs, and you can do it. That's the part I think I really appreciate, that I found out what I could do, and then I also… We studied some, but mostly that was all prayer and religion. Then I got sent to New Orleans with another young sister to finish my nursing. In New Orleans, and this is really what changed me, the sister servant there was named Sister Carlos McDonald, and she was one of my absolute mentors and a person that I really… And I'll tell you why, because she was tough, but she was fair. You knew that if you did something, you were going to know about it face to face, and you were going to be told what you had to do. But you were also loved. And I was sent to Loyola University while I was assigned… Well, I did two more years of nursing first with Sister Aloysius, who was also like that. And that's when we had a choir, and I loved that. But anyway, after I got my RN, then I was assigned to be in charge of a 30-bed unit in Hotel Du, which means house of God, beautiful hospital with verandas and a courtyard, beautiful marble staircases.

Marino:            Is that in New Orleans?

Koch:               In New Orleans, yes. And Sister Carlos was in charge. She got me sent to Loyola to take courses in the middle of taking care of all these. But I learned, too, there were some head nurses that had been there for years, and I had a rough time being accepted as this young sister in charge when they had been there in charge. It was a tough time. And I knew that, and I let it go. I worked with them. I remember both their names, all three of them. They were excellent nurses. I understand now. I think I understood, but I didn't think it was right because if you were the sister, you were in charge. And that's not right, really. But after a while, we did okay. And I kept going to college in between. Then Sister Carlos called me one day and said, “You're going to St. Louis University and just get your degree.” I knew then that Sister Carlos cared enough for me that she wanted to see me move on and be more educated. So I went there. My mother and father didn’t come to my bachelor’s graduation. A relative that lived in East St. Louis of my dad’s did. But that didn’t bother me. They were three hours away, it didn’t bother me. Then I was sent to Chicago. It was okay for a while and then the sister servant there was a different person. (laughs) I was young and popular, hardworking, making inroads, changing things, doing things that they’d not had done. And I didn’t flourish. In fact, I started just falling apart. It just didn’t work for me. So that was when I thought, and I said, I can’t do this. Sister Joanne, one of my best, best friends was there too, and she was such a wonderful person. And she said she would hear me crying and screaming at night. I think I was having dreams or something. I don’t know. So then I got sent back to St. Louis under somebody’s thumb to stay, and then that didn’t work. But I got a call one night when I was in St. Louis and they said my dad had had a heart attack. And my brother was in the Navy, and my mom was by herself, and she wasn't healthy, and I knew that I wanted to go home. And I asked to go home, and St. Vincent de Paul had a rule that you could never go back home. When he was a young priest, he visited his home, and he writes in his writings that “as I was walking down the dusty lane, I looked back, and I wanted to go back. And so, my daughters, you will never go back home. In order to keep you from wanting to go back, you just don't go back.” And so, I said, “I have to go. I'm taking care of other people.” And I had been 10 years, and I had loved it most of the time and gotten a great education. So, wonderful women that I really, really admired. Joanne was one of them. Afterward, when I was married and we had a condo in Florida, Joanne celebrated her 50th anniversary, and I flew her down to Florida, and she was so thrilled. She was so thrilled, and we were just so happy, but she said she cried and cried when I left. Because when somebody left, they just left. Nobody told them whether they died or somebody shot them or if they quit or what happened. They just were gone. They were just gone. So, they had no information, which was bad. It's different now. They get home visits. If they're the only child, they sometimes let them live in... But when that happened, it was ‘60. And that's been 60 years ago. Things had to change.

Marino:            Sure. Well, can I just ask a clarifying question? You mentioned the Benedictine, and I'm not as familiar with all the Catholic terminology and what that entails. So, can you just walk me through the difference between here, the Benedictine, and then the St. Vincent de Paul Daughters of Charity? Is that just different subsets?

Koch:               What there are are what they call religious orders. And each of those orders, there's Franciscans, there's Benedictines, there are Dominicans, there are Daughters of Charity, Passionist, and they were all founded by different men, priests, to help in their work. Now, they're all Catholic. They're under the bishop, the archbishop, the pope, that whole thing. But they're just what you would call service orders in the church. And so, a woman and a priest, a man who wants to be, has the choice of going to whichever one they think suits their personality. Or in many orders, in fact, most orders, like Dominicans are called teaching order. Sisters of St. Benedict were a teaching order, and then they did have one hospital. And the Daughters of Charity, because they were St. Vincent de Paul who was wanting the sisters to be out in the streets serving the poor and homeless, “don't talk to them about religion. Make soup first before you talk to them.” Did I make it plain?

Marino:            Yes.

Koch:               And each one of them has what I call their own charism. So, if a man, like our pope now was Augustinian, which I didn't even know there was an order of St. Augustine, who was a profound person. So, each of them has a saint, and they each have their own almost what they're devoted to. Notre Dame is Jesuits. That's mostly academic. So, if you have a degree or you want to teach. Now, the Daughters of Charity were nurses and teachers. Now, there was kind of a rift between those two because, you know, each one thought they had life better than the other. And actually, that's a different kind of person, really, because a Daughters of Charity that's a nurse like me, I was mostly with adults. Now, if you're a pediatric nurse… But a teacher nurse is usually with children. But he was different. Dominicans are teaching. The Passionist nuns are what you call, there's a name for it. There's a convent. And see, the sisters at Ferdinand call themselves a monastery, like the priests at St. Bernard are a monastery, and they're all under Benedict, who was German. And as I said, each of them has their books and how they taught. There's the Rule of St. Benedict, which I read, and it's wonderful. It's wonderful. The St. Vincent de Paul's Rule is the same way. It's their own from, like, Vincent de Paul was French. So, that makes a difference. You're German or you're French, you know, a big difference. I think Dominic was Italian. Anyway, that's it. And I think a lot of people, right now, young women are choosing Dominicans in Nashville, Tennessee, because they wear the beautiful white habit and the white veil. And young people are going back to liking that kind of… The Benedictines in Ferdinand are wearing clothes like you and I wear, because Vatican II said that we should not set ourselves apart, be known, because I can tell you, Michella, when I was a Daughter of Charity, I was waited on. When we went out anywhere, which we couldn't eat out, but, like, when I was going to school at Loyola, they'd carry my books. They'd pull out the chair. But that's a very Catholic town, and you were just adored. That's not good. You're supposed to be a servant. And so, it got changed. And Vincent de Paul had said, when he founded his order, “Daughters, you should look like the woman of the street, the poor woman that you are serving, so that you don't set apart and you're not made honorable. And feed them soup before you talk to them about God, and don't let soup get too salty.” He was very down to earth. So, they're all, I think, probably the Jesuits… I really like the Jesuits because they're so smart, and they deviate from things without… They cause some uproar. (laughs)

Marino:            That's interesting. Well, can you describe, too, I don't think habit is the term, but the dress and outfit that you wore at Daughters of Charity? Because didn't that have a distinctive hat or distinctive look as well?

Koch:               Yes. And I thought it was beautiful. It's called a cornette. I want to show it to you. Becoming Daughters of Charity, page 60.

Marino:            This is in your Santa's Daughter book, correct? Yeah. That's what we're looking at.

Koch:               Yeah, uh-huh. Here. This is called a cornet. It was all starched, and there's a little cap under there because our heads were shaved in order to be not attractive and not to be vain. And it had to be because it would be too hot, and you couldn't wear all this with a lot of hair on your head. And that was okay. And so there's a little cap, and then this is just one big long piece of starched white material that you lay down and you pull it, and it becomes these two things. And you learned how to do that, but your ears got sore from the starch. And as a nurse, you couldn't take blood pressures because you couldn't put it... You learn to read them by how it went. But the story is this was a scarf when it started out in the women on the street, and somebody, and see, there's no history to tell when this was changed. This was called a fichu. And this was like a cape, not a cape, but what am I trying to say?

Marino:            Not a collar, but, yeah, I don't know the term.

Koch:               And it was starched, and this was all starched, and it was secured with a pin, a straight pin, yeah. Now, this was, I'm trying to think too, like a vest, but not a vest. And then this was all wool, blue, and I like the idea it was blue, dark blue rather than black. Everybody else was in black. This had large pockets because I think that came from being on the street and having to keep stuff, and that was a separate thing that you tied. The pockets were separate, and there were two big pockets, and they were just full of stuff. They just hung there. And then an apron because they were working in the streets, and that apron existed when I was there. So you had on quite a bit of clothing. But now when you nursed, you took off this, and you took off… You had a long white starched just one piece thing. But this stayed, and this stayed.

Marino:            The hat and the...

Koch:               Interesting. How interesting. Okay. And that was the particular outfit for Daughters of Charity, not other orders.

Marino:            Yes.

Koch:               The Benedictines have evolved just like that. If you go to their monastery, they have pictures of their... See, ours are called sister servants. The big honcho was hmmm... They all had sister, sister something. Anyway, it's an abbess -- no, it's a prioress in the Benedictines. Sometimes it's an abbess. Sometimes it's a mother superior. They have different names, but they're the heads. And of course, in my day, when the Daughters of Charity had I don't know how many provinces, the Western Province, the Southern Province, because they had hundreds, thousands of people, young women. And that's gone down. They've had to redo the whole thing, because young people say, “I can do what they're doing without joining the order.” Now, I just got a book from an abbot from St. Myron (spelling??), and it's a woman named Sister Patricia. I wanted to be Patricia. When you got your habit -- they call that a holy habit -- you get your holy habit, you get a name. And you can put down what you'd like to have, and I put down Patricia, and I think I also said Anna after my aunt, who was my godmother. I got Raymond from my dad. I didn’t really like that, but I couldn’t complain. I was Sister Raymond.

Marino:            Yeah.

Koch:               Anyway, I have this book he gave me and it is a Sister Patricia who came along after me. That woman stayed in 26 years. I cannot imagine leaving after 26 years. I mean, 10… I was 19 when I went in, 29 when I came out. Two reasons, maybe three. One, my dad, take care of my mom and dad. And I suddenly realized that I wanted to have children, and I thought time is running out. (laughs)

Marino:            Is that just not something you had thought about earlier?

Koch:               No, no.

Marino:            Or just focused on service?

Koch:               And I always wonder if other women think of that. But I’m great friends with the sisters of Ferdinand. I think they have evolved beautifully. They’ve become educated much more and they’re so careful with money. They now drive cars. They wear earrings. Just really good people. And what was I talking about?

Marino:            You said you just realized you wanted to have children.

Koch:               Yeah, they love kids. And one of my best friends, she has nieces and nephews that have babies and she holds them and loves them, and she makes quilts for them. And I think, doesn’t that make you sad if you… But I guess not. They taught them in school for years and years and years, and I guess everybody is different I guess is the point. But I really wanted to have… And then my dad having been Santa Claus. My brother was already married but he never had any children, and he never did in either of his two… I don’t know if he couldn’t or what, but I thought, what a shame; he loves all these kids and he just was great. He loved kids and he was so wonderful. And then he wasn't going to have any grandchildren. And so that was… because I loved my dad. He deserved to have grandchildren, and he loved them. He was a storyteller. We'd get in a car to go somewhere, he'd tell a story, just make it up. The kids would just listen, and they were proud of him. And they all wrote a little bit, I don't know if it's in here, about when they discovered that Grandpa was Santa Claus. Everybody at a different time and different place. One of them said, my oldest son said, he said to me, “Is Grandpa Santa Claus?” He didn't say, does Grandpa play Santa Claus or act like Santa Claus? He said, “Is Grandpa Santa Claus?” And I said, “What do you think?” He said, “Well, they look like Grandpa's hands.” He had real big, strong hands. So that's what he noticed. Another one said, sounded like Grandpa's voice. And then another one caught Grandpa dressing one day in a Santa suit. But they all kept it. They kept it, you know, I did too when I was a kid. They'd come to the school, but the kids would all say, “Your Dad. That's your Dad.” And I’d say, “No, it's not.” I could lie even then.

Marino:            That's funny. Well, can we pick back up where you said you got the call that your father had a heart attack and that you had made the decision to go home, back to Mariah Hill, I'm assuming, or maybe Santa Claus at that point. So tell me what then happened and how you even got back home after being...

Koch:               Well, it was difficult. It was February. It was Squaw Valley Olympics, snowing, St. Louis, snow, snow, snow. And I had a friend that was a nurse, and she helped me buy clothes. I didn't know what size I wore. I didn't know what clothes cost. I didn't know how much a hamburger was. And I guess she helped get money to get on the Panama Limited from St. Louis to Washington, Indiana, which is kind of, you know where that is, Washington? And it was snowing. My dad had had the heart attack. My mother called Bill Koch, who had come up and taken over Santa Claus Land from his father, who had come up and started it. And she said, “I've asked Bill to come pick you up because I don't want to drive in this, and Dad can't.” And Bill had become such… Dad was Santa Claus at the park with the Koch family. And they had had him over for meals, and they worked together, and he was kind of like a son. Neither one of us were home. And she said, “He's coming to meet you.” And I remember that I was wearing a ski cap to cover my head. And I got off the train, and there was Bill. Well, he had always been a friend. He was 16 years older. We'd always been friends. I was in high school when he came up and took over the park. He was 16 years older than me. He was 32 when I was 16. And 32 and 16, that's a lot. And he had the first TV in town, so high school girls came over and sat there, and everybody giggled. And then in March, Jean, my friend, had her birthday, March 17, St. Patrick's Day. And he said, “Why don't you come to Jeannie's party?” Big parties always for birthdays. I said, “Oh, I don't want to.” I'd just come home in February. I got on the Panama Limited. He picked me up. He said that Mom said stop at the grocery store in Huntingburg and pick up some food because she was going to cook. So he stayed, and we had supper. And then Jeannie's birthday was in March, and he said, “Why don't you come? I'll pick you up.” So we went to that party, and her daughter, who I took out last night, remembers that party because she was a little girl in the house. And there were all these friends and a lot of liquor and a lot of beer. And one of the kids was in a crib, a baby, and they would set the bottles in the crib. I mean, it's just ridiculous. (laughs) And so that was the first time, I mean, just as a friend, he picked me up. Well, that was February, and then in March I stayed at home. Did I get a job? No, I didn't get a job. I was home. But I needed to do something. But I can't tell you exactly when I told Mom and Dad I wanted to go back to St. Louis and work as a nurse on my own because, you know, Mom and Dad were having to buy my clothes and feed me and everything. So I don't even know how I got to St. Louis. But anyway, I got to St. Louis, got a job in a veteran's hospital because they paid the most. Of all the hospitals, they paid the most. And I worked very, very hard. I found out that at that time the veteran's hospitals had great surgeons but maybe not such good nursing care. And I'd stay off late and help out. And they got word that I'd been a sister, so there was all this talk. And I got invited one night, a lot of black people, which I'd been around but never worked with that much. And one of the aides, an African-American woman, invited me to a party at her house. I was the only white person there. And I really learned something. That's a strange feeling. So how did they feel? Not anymore, I think it's better. But it really woke me up at that point. So I worked very, very hard. And then Bill Koch, he kept coming up, and he said, “I've got business up here, I want to buy something,” He’d take me out to eat, nice places. And I thought, that's strange, then he’d come back up again? And then finally in August, he said, “Why don't you come home?” And I said, “Well, you know, I've been thinking about it.” It was March to August, April, May, June, July, five months. But it was long enough that I'd had to pay for an apartment, for my uniforms, I bought a car, I didn't know I was paying interest. I didn't know anything. And so I said, “Okay, I think I will.” They had a fest at Tell City, and he wanted to go to that in August. And so I came home, and I got a job in Huntingburg, which I have pictures of, Stark Hospital, worked there, and then I can't remember when Bill asked me to marry him. But he asked me. He had built a house on the property next to the park, which was then Santa Claus Land. And he asked me to stop by, and he picked a ring, a box up and said, “Will you marry me?” I was 29, he was 45, but we had always been friends. And it wasn't that kind of marriage where you're just, oh, wow, I'm so in love. But it was a good… And actually, we were such a good team. It's amazing. We didn't plan it that way, I don't think. But the fact was, I'm the outgoing person, person to organize, work with people, do procedures, do that sort of thing. And he was the architect, engineer, planning, working on roads, working on things to do, and money. I mean, everything about money. I hate numbers. I hate sitting down. I don't like math one single bit. I don't even like doing my checkbook. I put it off. But I love… and so I did that part of it. I was out. He was in with all these drawings and all these plans, and then we'd talk about it and decide what we were going to do. But I think that's really wonderful, and I think it's why we got so much done. He was such a visionary, like I said, about having underground electrical, all the things he did, the ecumenical church, so many things. But I always say, and he was a party guy before I married him. He was the last bachelor in the family of nine, and when he came up here, he got in with all these guys that went to the bars because he was still a bachelor. And, in fact, his secretary said… I was always, you go to work. If you're supposed to be there at 8, you get there a quarter till. And from the sisters, you better be or you're in trouble. And even as a nurse, you had to be. And his secretary, Ms. Mack, said, “My goodness, he's coming in to work on time.” So I think we both learned from each other. I think we both grew from each other. And we really developed a great, strong love. And the five children. I was pregnant. Well, we both wanted children. He came from a family of nine. So we had a honeymoon in Europe, which was really something. It was wonderful. And, of course, I'd never been to Europe. And the first time I got on a plane, they said, “Welcome, Mrs. Koch.” And I thought, who are they talking to? And I have pictures from that. And we had a great time. And then we came home and went to work, you know, developing and working. And I got him to work on time. (laughs) Realizing, okay, now you’re going to have responsibility. Because the first son was born 10 months after we were married. I wanted six kids because of the fact that I only had one brother and he died. I still wish I had a sister or a brother today. My friend just called me this morning. She’s going out with her brother, several of them. I just would love that. I have good friends, but I think that’s different. And so long my brother was in the Navy and I was a sister, so we never really… We were working together when he finally came back home. But Bill had built a house and I went back to that house on the property, and we still had a lot of people over, we still had a good time. But we worked hard and then we eventually said, you know, we’re going to have to… And I think I saw the thing about changing from… It was Santa Claus Land from the time Grandpa Koch came here and started it until 1984. And that was when we talked about it and said, “You know what? We can’t grow. We’re a kiddie park. We’re just for little bitty kids. If we want to grow, we have to have other things and we have to have a different name.” 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. We have a sign down there. They were out on the highway. But it wasn’t easy, but then we built that first roller coaster. It all just evolved and worked very hard, Michella. And when you talk about leadership, which maybe you’re get to, 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 Claus Land and Holiday World. Because some of them have learned a lot at home, especially if they’ve been from farms they learned a little more, nowadays particularly. But when I was there. And 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. 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. I always said to the young people, “You don't work for me. We work together. We're a team.” The other thing that 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. My greatest joy now is that those young people are still coming up to me today. It's amazing. Well, see, “Mrs. Koch, 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.” 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. Women are good at that, and she was getting the father, and she told it in public, but 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 is just so successful. But those stories, that's why you do it. I'm not going to be here forever. Even with this, Kathleen is wonderful. She's just so good.

Marino:            Do you mean the museum here?

Koch:               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. We should talk about that whole process. But she's the best, and she's a self-starter. She thinks of things to do. Kathleen can go because I won't be here, and she maybe… 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… 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 when 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. 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 o’clock to 3 o’clock. 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 Gettlefinger, 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 let them know they won't have any extra work.” (laughs) I said, “Okay.” 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 it's a beautiful day. And now… I used to emcee them. I used to organize them 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. 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 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 always 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 they're 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 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 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 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 cleaned toilets and cleaned tables, and then you get cooperation. But if you sit at a desk and never show your face, people will not do it.

Marino:            Yeah, that’s I think a very important lesson. For sure. Well, I definitely want to talk more about Holiday World and how that has developed, but I also am interested in your early relationship to Santa Claus Land and the town. And I think a lot 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?

Koch:               He came to be Santa Claus when he was 19 years old, when he was on the USS New York in Brooklyn Navy Yard. And they said, we're going to have a party for what they called 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 at Ferdinand, the priests at St. Meinrad, typing class at Dale, (inaudible), and people answered letters.

Marino:            These are letters to Santa?

Koch:               That children had written to Santa. And so that was just one of the first things. And then I have pictures of him in his... 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. He never played it; he believed it. He took it so seriously. He wrote a little book, I have it somewhere, How To Be A Real Santa. He’d be upset if he saw a Santa with a nasty beard or… His 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. He and another man had a Santa school and I was there. And he was inducted into the International Santa Claus Hall of Fame. Then I was several years later, as only the second woman, which I really appreciated. And then when Santa Claus Land was built, Louis Koch, who was Bill Koch’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. 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 as Santa Claus. We had cameras taking pictures and kids lined up. 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 kid 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. He really made it real and he was wonderful. We'd go down on Sundays, our 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. We’d 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.” 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. 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 were always telling at school that there's no Santa. But I mean you know they're just more everything, everything. So when somebody says, “My friends say that you're not real,” we say, “Santa is real. Santa is forever,” or something. And mothers 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.

Marino:            Yeah, I do agree, very much. Well, if you could walk me back even a little bit further with the Koch family story. They were from Evansville, is that right? And then is it Louis Koch, was that Koch 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?

Koch:               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 man named Milton Harris. And they were going to start the first tourism development in town. They got in a fight, we have a document down there, about land rights. They started in ’35. When I give a tour here, I always say Santa is four years younger than me, but he's been there since ’35. 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. 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. Then I guess from ‘30 - when did the war start?

Marino:            ’41.

Koch:               ’41 yeah. It just, there was nobody here and so everything was abandoned. It was just abandoned. It 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. So Louis Koch was from a family of three men and two women. The men were George Louis and Albert. Louis Koch was my husband's father and he was Catholic and married the daughter of a Presbyterian minister and he had nine children. Bill was exactly middle of nine children, five boys and four girls. 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. He made tin bugles like during the war and they sold, and we had some of them. Omy one of my sons did. He rode a bicycle, that evolved, and in his book that his great-grandson wrote Mead Johnson was developing a business, pharmacy things. It'd 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. Louis Koch found a way to make it shelf-stable, which is not unusual. It's just amazing 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 had a company on the Ohio River. He gave Louis Koch some property on the river in thanks for the Enfamil shelf-stable stuff, and that became George Koch's sons. Because George was the father of Louis, George and Albert. And then that became, during the war, a business that really succeeded a lot making things from steel or in the war effort. I'd have to research that again, but that's when they started growing, because of the war. A lot of companies did. Evansville did something for the bombers and a lot. It was known as a city.

Marino:            There was a P-47 factory down there.

Koch:               P-47, that's it. So that's what got them then on and they became mostly air conditioning. It was a Carrier Air Conditioning. When I married Bill in ’60, they were there were still having board meetings with the daughters and the sons in George Koch's son's building. It was not large, but they had been very successful. Two of the older sons, Bob and Malcolm, had taken over during the war. Bill went to the Navy -- LJ wasn't old enough -- and so he was the one that was gone. So when he came home, he thought… He did a postgraduate 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 to 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.

Marino:            You said Bill had graduated from Purdue.

Koch:               He had graduated from Purdue. He had a bachelor's in I think mechanical engineering but then he did that postgraduate course. And there were eight men with engineering or architecture. 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. 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 Koch. Those three were so close because they were together at Pearl Harbor. 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 and 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. (laughs)

Marino:            Obviously (laughs)

Koch:               Then when the war was over he worked for an admiral in Washington D.C. He got a lot of perks from working with the admiral. He dated the admiral's daughter. I'd have to look, 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 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. So his dad had come in the meantime in ‘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, Santa Claus Land was dedicated August 3^rd, 1946, and then Bill came in ‘47 and that was really news. This bachelor guy 30-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 his sister did the dollhouse, which is what this was for a while. This building was a dollhouse at Holiday World, showed antique dolls. Then we got married in ’60, December of ’60. We knew we had to make it bigger because it couldn't stay just a kiddie park because you couldn't have big rides. We knew that. 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. When we got the first coaster, that was a big deal. So did I answer?

Marino:            Yes, absolutely. Well, and you had mentioned this a little bit earlier too, you started having kids fairly soon and you’re a young mother as you're here developing the park as well. So how did your role evolve in the first decade or so of marriage with the park and motherhood? How did you balance that? What did that look like for you?

Koch:               Well, I think I was the first woman to bring their child to work. Will was a baby. Crib in Bill's office. I put the crib in his office because he stayed in the office. I was out there doing other things.

Marino:            That's very smart.

Koch:               People loved it you know, they loved having this baby. And then I think when Kristi came along too, but I think that kind of stopped after the third one. But, you know, it was mostly meetings and just being a cheerleader for a long time. And then when the children got old enough, and I said this to Dan, the one that's in Alabama, “When did you start working at the park? You were about 12 years old.” “No, Mom, I was eight.” I can remember just like it was yesterday, Natalie and Dan. Natalie was the youngest, born in ‘67. She just had a birthday. They were making cotton candy. You know cotton candy?

Marino:            Yes.

Koch:               Oh my gosh. They had cotton candy on their clothes, on their shoes, on everything. And I came by to see how they were doing, and they needed change, and they couldn't leave. And I went and got change. It was just a zoo. But they were doing it. And he said, “No, we were eight when we started.” And Kristi, she's a neurologist in Indianapolis now. She had a horse, and that horse was so smart. And this lady where we boarded it on the off season said, “I'm going to high school Prancer.” And she rode Prancer in this cute little (inaudible), and I walked with her all the way from, well, I don't know if you know where the campground is, but anyway, all the way around a back road to come around here and be at Santa Claus Land and have Prancer do his tricks. Now, Prancer would count with one foot. Prancer would kneel down and bow, and Kristi would jump him -- she was like 12 years old -- through a fiery hoop. Her mother stood there and let that happen. I mean, and I walked with her with that and then walked them back to where the stable was or to the pasture at our house. So everybody got involved. It was like we were just all… Dan was doing games, and everybody was doing something. So they learned the business and learned how hard it was from all the way. Now, then when they went to high school, they went to Dale, I have a picture. They were all five in elementary school at the same time. We'd go in, the teachers would put a whole afternoon for the business, and there's a picture of all five of them sitting in front of the David Turnham School in Dale. And then a new high school was built, and they all were there. Now, it was hard on them because the Koch family was very successful in Evansville. It was growing, growing, growing. It's still growing. It's in the hands of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. They've diversified. They're very smart people. And somehow that family has made it, which is unusual. I think they're in at least the fourth generation. We just had a reunion at Bosse Field, which is the second oldest baseball diamond in the United States. It's owned by a great-grandson, that ball team. That's how it is in Evansville. University of Evansville has a Koch School of Engineering. There's a children's museum, Koch Children's Museum. There's another museum. The Koch does the, oh, what am I, shows you the stars.

Marino:            Oh, like an astronomy lab?

Koch:               Astronomy, Koch, yeah. The name is everywhere, and it's so respected. And they're just… no, it's not perfect. I mean, there are failures, and there are strange people that are too smart and can't live in the ordinary world. But then there's also… that have also, what I think is so, so important, done so much for so many charities. One of them worked really hard on a… well, started Signature School. Signature School in Evansville, in a little place. And now it was the first, the best high school in the state of Indiana, second under some academy now. But he started it. It would be my husband's nephew who did that. His brother's grandson. See, I can't keep that. Anyway, it's a big bunch of people. But my two granddaughters that graduated from there, this man walks in with the graduates, sits down. It's his turn to get up and give the… and when Natalie's daughter… he said, “Congratulations, cousin.” The president of the university is his first cousin. I mean, it's just crazy, because we married so late compared to them. It's crazy. But when they were in Heritage Hills High School, the local one, Bill Koch and I were building Christmas Lake Village, which is a gated community. It was advertised as being a retirement community, which wasn't true. We just had so many obstacles, and so many people who were fighting against it. I have clippings about when we tried to get water, and they fought us when they wanted to have the high school right here and wouldn't let it happen. It was fear. It was having not enough information, probably. So it was rough. And Kristi, who's the second child and is now a neurologist, and she's a Taekwondo senior master and is now at a rowing competition and just won a world competition. I mean, just one of those kind of people, and they've inherited a lot of that drive, I think, to perfection or to be. But there's a Junior Achievement in Evansville. You know about that?

Marino:            I've heard of that.

Koch:               And so they have a hall of fame. And I think one of my best moments, I got inducted into it, which I was very proud of. But one time I was at the meeting when they were nominating people. They always have two living people and one deceased person. And somebody named a Koch, and somebody else said, “My heavens, there's already more Kochs.” And somebody in the room said, “But there aren't many families like the Kochs.” I just wanted to get up and cheer. Now, that's true. But like I said, there are failures. There are things we're just not real proud of. But they've done so much, and so much good, so much good. Grandpa did this as a philanthropy. He just wanted a free place, and for a while it was 50 cents for a long time. But he would be proud of what it became. Yeah, I know.

Marino:            Well, you were talking about your children, and I've heard at least three names. But there were five kids. Can you tell me their names and their order?

Koch:               Will was the oldest. He was William Albert Koch II. At that point, my husband was very active in Indiana politics because he had to get things done. And he really was absolutely on both sides. Because to get things done, you have to work both sides. And I don't know how you came down, if you came Interstate 64? The highway is dedicated to Bill Koch, yes. And that was the guy who was a Democrat governor. And he came here to (inaudible) that to our park. That's how big it was that they worked together. And that's what it ought to be, and it's just come to just fighting, fighting, fighting. But so Will was the first, and we got from the governor or something, but we got so many gifts. And then Kristi was second, 14 months later, and we named the Christmas names, K-R-I-S-T-I, Isabel, after my mother. And then Daniel Joseph, named after Daniel Joseph Yellig, who was my dad's… I'm keeping history. And then was Philip John Koch, who the first German coming from Germany was Johann Philipp Koch. He's named for him. And then Natalie was just a Christmas name, Natalie Clarice. Her grandma Koch, Louis’ wife, was Clarice. So they all have family names. Bill made a mistake, and I told him so. When we were aboard with the kids, like most German families, and it's still happening, the oldest son is the one who's going to get the farm and the one who's going to get the business. And I would tell my husband, you're always looking at Bill. You need to look around. But he just… So Will got to be president of the park, and everybody was on the board, and we worked together discussing things. But Kristi went off to Nashville to Vanderbilt, and she had three years of electrical engineering, worked for George Koch Sons in Evansville, which is an engineering firm in the summer, and came home and said, “I don't want to do that. I want to be a doctor.” So we cried and said, “Take your last year of engineering.” Will was a scholar at Notre Dame. So he went in as medicine, came out as electrical engineering. She went into Vanderbilt as engineering and came out as a doctor. But she had to take all those pre-med courses and get ready for medical school. And then Dan was, he had the personality, didn't work real hard in school. Everybody loved him, a lot more popular than the others. And he went to Purdue, like his dad, for one year. And then he himself said, “I can't stay here. I've been partying too much. I'm not going to make it.” He said, “If you let me go to Miami, University of Miami, I'll buckle down and work. I want to be an attorney.” So that was a good idea. He didn't know anybody at University of Miami. And he is an attorney. He has a law degree and law license. And then Natalie took her, nobody went to the same college. They were all over everywhere. He'd be in one state, I'd be in another state going to something. And Natalie went to SMU Dallas. She loved Dallas. And she got in a sorority. And she has, I think, five degrees. She has an MBA. She has a degree in Spanish, Latin American Studies, Bureau of American Affairs. She’s on a farm right now with three little kids, three girls. Will had three children; two girls and one boy. Kristi had two boys and one girl, and her daughter is in medical school now. She’s going to be a pediatric neurologist. Her son is MBA. The next son is a lawyer.

Marino:            Oh my goodness.

Koch:               One is in New York and one is in Chicago. And then Dan has had two children. One is still in college and one is working at the Alabama park. We started an Alabama park in ’14 down there with him. And then Philip adopted two children from Russia. And Lexa has a masters and she lives in Evansville and has two children. And Logan is right now… Logan waited until he was 23. He had a hard time learning. He has a hard time taking tests. And he made it out of high school and then he didn’t go to college, and he was just working. He came to me – we’re close – and he said, “Grandma, at Christmas I realized all my cousins have been to college and I haven’t. I’m going to college and I’m going to make it.” And he enrolled himself in USI in Evansville, got a tutor, worked on it, got in a room in his home with everything, he can close the door. He got on the Dean's list. He's going to graduate. First thing he called me, “I'm going to college, Grandma. I want you to be at my graduation. I'll graduate in ‘25 in December.” And I said, “I'll be there,” and I will be there. Right now, he's interning at a Marriott in Marco Island, Florida. He wants to be in the hospitality. That's him. Then Natalie has one at Stanford and one at Cornell, and they're looking at colleges now. There are 13, and this is all the grandchildren, the 13. But I lost one. I bet it was from a seat belt. I know where I can go and get that taken care of. I just have to add it. Anyway, that's the five. Of course, Will passed away in 2010 and Philip in 2013. I get tired of hearing “no parent should live through that.” That's true, but don't say that to people. Just say you're sorry. Just help. Just pray. I've learned. I tell people all the time, I don't know how I do it. I really don't, except part of it is the German strength. Part of it is education. As a nurse, having had a lot of education in death and life. I tell people, at the Wisdom Days, I always talk. It's great getting old because you don't have to play act anymore. You really don't care if somebody doesn't like your shoes or your clothes or your car or anything. It does not matter, and that's wonderful. I'm sad lots of days. I miss my two boys. One of the big things is they were like their father and me, that they could have accomplished so much here. They both lived here, and they had plans for things they were going to do that aren't happening. I tried to talk a couple of grandkids into doing some of them, but it hasn't happened. Right now, Natalie and I are trying to carry it on as much as we can, like this. I just made up my mind, nobody knew the history, and we had to do something about it. I went out and bought the church and bought this and moved it over and got that building from the grandkids, half of it, just a little, and still have a lot to do. I have great pride in what they accomplished while they were alive, and I made up my mind I was not going to be this poor, pitiful mother/grandmother that cried and wept and everybody had to worry about and take care of because that's not fair to the living. If you have people living, you live for the living, and you care for them. I can't help Will or Phil, either one. I did everything I could, and I think part of it is that sister training that I had. Part of it is just religion. It's often the wrong direction, in my humble opinion, in lots of places, lots of ways, but the spirituality says I'm not in control. I had stage 4 cancer in 2001. Five months of chemo and radiation, thought I was going to die. And I think I had a miracle because when the doctors opened me up, they said if they hadn't had the report of where it was, they wouldn't have known it was ever there. So I think I was saved for a purpose. I mean, my whole life now is this town and the county and the state, anything I can do. We just had an incident in town where a man who is controlling is on a committee, and he decided that one of the local beauty shops had put up a sign that wasn't supposed to be permitted. So he told the beauty shop lady, a wonderful woman who has been here a long time, plus a barber shop in there, that she had to take it down. And I found out about that, and I said, “Why?” And somebody took pictures of other signs in town. Nobody did anything about it. So I got one of the women that's on the town board, and I said, “What's going on? What happened?” “Oh, well, this man, he's controlling, he's on a committee.” I said, “Well, why did she take it down? She shouldn't have taken it down.” And then she said to me just this week, once again, I go to meetings to be present, to say I support them and do what I can to help. Physically, I can't do the hard work, but I can do mentally. So anyway, she told me just… when did I see her? Friday, Friday evening, this woman that's on the town board. She came over and hugged me. She said, “Last town board meeting, I told them the matriarch of the town is upset about the fact that…” So see, it makes a difference. She said, “They paid attention.” And so just that little bit, if I can do that, I don't think I'm important, but people think I am because of the park, because of what the family's done. I don't think that at all. I wouldn't be anywhere without having been very fortunate to marry Bill Koch and all the family and all the friends and all the people. But I know that what I say and do is important, and so I have to watch out and be careful. I can't go to a bar and get drunk. (laughs) But that's just an example of I had no idea she was going to make that statement. I hate that word matriarch. It's awful. (laughs)

 Marino:            We're going on almost two hours now.

Koch:               We are?

Marino:            Yeah, and so I didn't know if you wanted to power through.

Koch:               I don't get tired.

Marino:            You don't get tired? We can keep on if you're okay.

Koch:               Yeah, I'm fine.

Marino:            Okay, great. Well, so you were talking about how your role with the park and the park itself evolved over time, but I know you've held a lot of different titles. Director of Cleanliness, I think, and maybe even...

Koch:               Queen of Clean.

Marino:            I like it. I like that.

Koch:               Yes, Queen of Clean.

Marino:            And there were a couple others.

Koch:               Chief Elf. Matriarch, which I hate. Okay. Well, Mrs. Koch, mostly, yeah.

Marino:            Maybe even Director of Values. I feel like I heard that once.

Koch:               Values. That happened. Will did that. And it's, once again, about family businesses. I think I kind of got to the point where he didn't know what to do with me. I had everything organized in the cleaning department, and that was really... When I really got active, he said, “Mom, the park's not clean enough.” I said, “Okay, I'll take it over.” And, I mean, that was years and years and years of doing that and keeping it that way. And I loved it because I could be out. I was out with the people, out with all the young people working and with the guests. It was just wonderful speaking to them and answering questions. People ask where the restroom is, and it's right there or right there, but they ask where the restroom is. (laughs) But I loved it. Just loved it. I never got tired. Would be there from opening to close. When we had roller coaster enthusiasts until midnight, standing there cheering them on. Somebody asked me what was the worst day of the park. It was when a young woman died on the Raven, and we found out she stood up. There was nothing mechanically wrong with the Raven, but that was a terrible night. And once again, Will was in charge. Bill was already gone. And he came to me and said, “Mom, the coaster guys are all back at the picnic area, and somebody has to go back and tell them we're closing the park and they can't ride rides.” They were going to have private riding. So he sent me to go tell them. And, of course, they wanted to know why. And I said, “We've had an incident -- I can't tell you about it yet -- which was bad.” But that was a terrible night. That was just awful. And then the whole television crews were in the parking lot. It was all over. It was the fault of the park, and that was bad. So we let them examine the ride with television crews taking pictures, and the ride was okay. There wasn't anything wrong with it. But that was probably the worst. We had an employee that died mowing because… The person in charge said, “Don't mow on that hill,” and he went and mowed on that hill anyway, and it turned over. We finally formed a committee and asked a really wonderful pastor, not a priest, to be on call for those kind of incidents. So we had people that we trained about what to do in those cases. Because when we were small, we just really didn't have any big rides. But you need to be ready to know what to do. Families need a place to sit and talk and explain and all of that. So it helped. But it's hard. It's a hard business. It's really very hard.

Marino:            Well, from what I've read and learned, it seems like Santa Claus Land and then Holiday World, as it evolved, was founded as a family business and then really instilled these values and a clear vision of what your park wanted to be. How did that come about, or how did that evolve over time?

Koch:               Well, through just the family values that we had from Grandpa Koch and then from Bill and me, and me having been a religious woman, I think we worked on values. And I couldn't tell them to you today, but instead of having a mission statement, it was like what we valued. I think one of the things we really, really did well we’d value our employees. And we were just so blessed with such loyal people I think because of that respect and the support. I can tell you a story about that. There weren’t any African American people around here at all when I was growing up. There was one family in Dale and that family had three daughters. One of the daughters was in my grade in high school, and the mother came to work for us, Mary Elizabeth. She worked at first at the park. And then when I think I had my fourth child, Bill said, “Would you like for Mary to come up to the house and help you?” And I said, “That would be great,” and it freed me up a lot and she loved them. She loved them. Now where was I going? I know, to tell the story. So my dad went and got her husband a pension. They lived out on a farm, and it’s a long story about that. But that helped them. And so once again, it’s not just one group of people, it’s all that family. My family, his family working together. And so then he died, the husband, and Mary Elizabeth was out on this farm by herself. Her children, one became a nurse, they did well. And we, Bill and I, helped her find a house in the town in Dale, helped her get a car. Those were the kind of things I think that we valued, was helping, while you were still building and working. And so, I wrote that just lately. Oh, the local paper, it's called Spencer County Leader, there was a warehouse, and in that warehouse, local women made, George Koch's sons made brass furniture. Or if you've been to weddings where they have these brass (inaudible), kneelers, and maybe things as you walk up the aisle, George Koch's sons made that. They were famous for their brass furniture. So, somehow or other, Bill started a factory in Santa Claus Land to make the pillows for those brass cushions on the seats. And the local women worked there, and they were so loyal, and they worked with these machines. They had to learn how to work with vinyl and velvet and different machines, make buttons that fit on these, all of this. And so the local woman, I gave her pictures that I had of that. And my memory is of this box truck coming up from Evansville and backing up to that warehouse and loading all these cushions, and they went to Evansville and they got put and shipped out. And so she did this whole story, which I cut out, because that's history. It's history. And there are two women in Ferdinand, Indiana, where you got off 64 is Ferdinand, and they worked there, and so they contributed a lot to this story, some history even I didn't know. Their sister was the manager of that sewing department. But it was that loyalty, and Freida Furch (spelling??) was the woman who worked… We had a little hut, it might be in here. We charged nothing at the beginning and then 50 cents. And people drove up, and she said, “Welcome to Santa Claus Land. Here's the brochure. We'll give you the information.” You could hear her. We had her. Anyway, Freida worked years and years and years. And Freida was getting so old that we didn't know what to do with Freida. But we told Freida she could help us when we got in plush, which is these teddy bears, anything fuzzy, dolls, whatever you want to call them. We set her up in a room with a sewing machine and told her she had to check all that stuff for holes and then fix them. And she got paid and stayed there. I don't know the question you asked me, but we weren't just people. Everybody was in this together. And we treasured those people. Freida wound up in a nursing home. I went down there with a hat for her 100th birthday, 90th birthday. I mean, they're thrilled when you come to visit them. It's just, they're so happy. It's still today that way. And I think those are the kind of values that you hope are being passed on.

Marino:            Well, so you just talked a little bit about the employees, specifically instilling values and respect with the employees. But I know also that the park is sort of famous for the visitor experience and making them sort of feel a part of the family as well. So can you tell me a little bit about that?

Koch:               Well, initially, when I was there, I haven't been there since 2012, and there are two granddaughters. The grandson, after Will passed away, Will had taught him how to do lights and sound for shows. Will could play lots of instruments. He loved doing that kind of thing. He loved all these electronic things. My husband would too, and I hate them. But anyway, when Will died, and then the decision was made that Will's family would take over, I thought that they needed to do it. I thought if I were there, I have my ways of doing things. They're old ways, probably. They're young. They're smart. They can do it, and it may be different. Is that what you want? Where was I going? But I hope there are just a few of the old people. There are not many. They're getting older. The guy that used to paint all the signs, and Pat, no, not Pat. Anyway, one of them has had to have a liver transplant. A lot of the old employees. One came up to me at church the other night, hugged me. There are still a few around that have been there a long time, but it's different. It's 2025, and it's electronic, and there's just so many things that I don't even understand. Both of the girls have married good people. One of them has been in amusement parks a long time, corporate amusement parks. He brings great ideas. I know that they like the business, and they're getting accolades, and people say it's wonderful, so that's it. I don't want to interfere. I don't want to say this is not right. I mean, we never had alcohol because we thought it wasn't a good idea. They decided to. It seems like it hasn't caused any problems. So I'm not in control.

Marino:            It seems like even when you were involved, and there were some key changes made in the early 2000s of the innovative idea of free soft drinks.

Koch:               Natalie thought of the free soft drinks. She never got credit for it, but she did. She was the one. When we had picnics back in the picnic grove, like a big Toyota, Toyota would come and bring all their employees, and they'd have a special, and then we'd have a special kiosk for them where they had a band, and they could get their drinks. They had been paid for in advance. Natalie said, “My goodness, and it keeps people from passing out, and it keeps them… They don't have to go out and stand in line for one drink, and why don't we do this but figure out a way to do it?” Well, we did. You just add a little to the front gate, and if you have enough people, you work with Pepsi and Coke and get a good price, and you're going to have your people there and help us maintain this, et cetera, et cetera, and it's worked out wonderfully. And we've been criticized. I had a man follow me around from another park a long, long time ago, wanted to see what we were doing, and his words every time were, “Well, you don't charge for parking? Do you know how much money you're losing?” To him, it was all about money, and that's not the case. If you give a good product plus a good experience, the money will come.

Marino:            In your mind, does this connect back to your early days of service?

Koch:               Oh, sure. Absolutely, yeah. I don't know if you know, and I don't expect that of everybody. And so many things I did didn't seem unusual to me, like bringing a child to work, or, well, I was on commercials. I would just do anything to help the park. I jumped out. It looked like I was jumping out of a helicopter, and I was a bee standing in a cornfield in a bee outfit, out of a cake. I mean, anything, anything. So, question?

Marino:            Well, I just asked if sort of this emphasis on employees and emphasis on the visitor experience came back to service for you.

Koch:               Yeah, yeah. I think it was probably being in the Daughters of Charity, seeing my dad, what he did, how he served, and how much he accomplished by all that service, not for himself. And the whole thing is, when you do those things, this is absolutely true, more comes back than you… it does, in love and seeing somebody succeed or the things that happen. It's not hard. It really isn't. But I would go out every single morning I got to work, pick up my broom and dustpan. There was always a place where the water collected if it rained. I'd sweep out the little hole. They used to call it Mrs. Koch's. Little kids would jump in it and make everybody wet. Go out to the front gate and stand there and greet everybody coming in. Nobody told me to do that. It's like coming to your house. It's part of you’re coming to my house. And then at night, same thing. I'd go back out. And that's what people remember. They say it to me over and over. We remember when you were standing there. And the big thing was if they knew my kids, they'd start talking about the kids or whatever. I have had both hips reconstructed. And one time they took me out in a wheelchair and I sat in a wheelchair, but I was there. One day I walked 14 miles because it's a long way around once we added the water park. But it wasn't hard. It was so much fun. And to see it grow and to see people that were happy and to see employees who learned so much, I say, it's really good for me because lots of young men that worked for me are now policemen. And I've been stopped a couple of times and they come up and say, “Oh, Mrs. Koch, I worked for you.” (laughs)

Marino:            Well, I hope you didn't get a ticket after that. (laughs) Well, you've mentioned several times throughout the interview about women getting things done and really how you had to sort of push as a woman to get higher education. And I know I've read that you've also served as a mentor to a lot of young women in business and other things. Why was that important for you to do, to make sure to carry that on?

Koch:               Because of my experiences, going into that principal of that school and being told why would a girl want to go to college? I think a person that was in education, educated, it shouldn't matter whether I was a man or a woman if I wanted to have an education. And I grew up with, there was one other girl in my class that became a nurse. Otherwise, worked in an office, got married and had babies, worked on the farm. And that’s fine if you’re happy with that. But it took a long time for women. Now, look at TV. When I was growing up, well, we didn’t have a TV. We just had a radio. But it was all men. It has evolved wonderfully, I think. I mean, I know that women are holding their own very, very well. We will have a woman president someday. A lot of the things that I believed in were just me for some reason. And I think maybe from my dad’s family because he had Aunt Anna who married a non-Catholic and moved to Louisville, Kentucky. Aunt Bea who married a guy from Finland or Denmark and lived in Wyoming. And Aunt Tilly who lived in Saint… I mean these women went away from here, married people who weren’t Catholics. Amazing. So that spirit started before me, I think. I'm just amazed that they did that. That wasn't easy. How did they do that? I don't know. Because Aunt Anna was in Louisville and she was my godmother and she had no children. So I would spend a lot of time with her. And she was a housewife. She never had a job. But they obviously had that pioneer spirit or something. Like my dad going off to the Navy out of Mariah Hill when he was so young. There's something there. Daniel Joseph Yellig, who had a blacksmith shop and was very successful and kept perfect records. There's just something in that besides, well, with my kids having the Koch thing besides. I think there are a lot of people, even today, Michella… like I read theology books. I'm reading two theology books right now. I just finished one. It's called If the Church Were Christian. Loved it. Just loved it. Oh, it was wonderful. I have it all highlighted. Another one, it's, anyway, I'm reading two. One's really theologic and the other one is back to what I like: You've got to make some changes. But I'll say to someone, well, something about a book. “Do you understand that?” “Yeah, I understand.” Yes, I do. And I like that. Now, that person may like cooking or sewing or farming or gardening. But to read theology books is really kind of crazy.

Marino:            We all have our particular interests, I think.

Koch:               But it's true, isn't it?

Marino:            Yeah, yeah.

Koch:               Yeah, I hate to cook. Absolutely despise cooking. I have some cake mix in the house I bought because I thought I'm going to bake a cake. Still haven't done it. Just too busy. You know? And I don't blame… I think it's wonderful if you can make a beautiful cake that just looks gorgeous and everybody comes and says, oh… I say to my kids, “What are you going to say when I die? You can't say, I can fry the best chicken or I can… no, you can't say that. Don’t say that.”

Marino:            I think they'll have plenty of other things to say for sure. Speaking of the theology, I know that was it in early 2000s, maybe 2001 or so, that you earned a theology degree?

Koch:               Yes.

Marino:            Your master's? Why did you decide to do that? It sounds like that was maybe at a hard time for you.

Koch:               Yeah, I was in the throes of cancer and I wanted a master's at least. I really wanted a doctorate. I finally got an honorary doctorate. So sometimes I get letters to Dr. Koch. But again, it was like that young girl that wanted an education and got a way to do it. So I found out the sisters from Ferdinand, see that's 24 years ago, had a… she was wonderful, she died of cancer, and she was doing a program where you could form a group. What do you call that? It was from Loyola, New Orleans, and all the material came from New Orleans. And somebody was the head of it, like the sister taught it. And we had a group of, it was one man and all women, and we met and we had to take tests and do everything. I was on the Loyola campus as a sister when I was there, but to get this master's, I was never in their school. It was all done remote. And once again, oh my gosh, everybody in that group were the same, they wanted to know more, and the discussions were so great, because questioning, asking why are we doing this, why couldn't we do this better, why is this priest, you know, those kinds of things. And so I was, I think, three years to get a four-year degree. Well, we worked all the time, through summer and everything. And I remember that Natalie took me to a class when I had cancer, and she had to stop on the way home to let me throw up. I was so sick. And she said, “Mom, why don't you ask for an extension? You just shouldn't...” I said, “I want to finish.” I was so close to finishing. And so I wrote the last thesis, and I'm amazed now. You know, you just don't know. I believe in the spirit. I think you're just blessed to have these intuitions or whatever it is. But my thesis was:  Where are the prophets in today's world? And now people are asking that same question. Because the prophets in the Old Testament would stand up there and say, “You fools, you hypocrites,” you whatever, right? And where are our prophets? We need prophets. So that was the whole… and I don't do well, I'm doing well here, but I wrote it, and then I had somebody type it and footnote it and do everything because I was so sick. I was so sick. I felt so bad. And I got an A on that. And just because I believed in what I wrote, and it was an inspiration. It was just an inspiration, I think. I hope I can find that. I think I have all that somewhere.

Marino:            That's really interesting.

Koch:               Yeah, it really is. It is. Because we still need prophets. Now, the books I'm reading are prophetic. They are. The one that says if the church were Christian, it goes back to… I'm one of these people, I even researched about Jesus. I think there's a prophet that lived that was a really different kind of person, like me, like lots of people, that said, “You hypocrites,” and threw people out of the temple, and said, “What are you doing? You're wearing this gold, and you're not taking care of people.” He forgave people. He loved the sinner and loved the homeless. Why aren't we doing that instead of dogma and doctrine? We have to keep this rule and that rule, and you have to do this to be in the presence of God. No. We're in the presence of God. God is everywhere. Anyway, the books, and I reread them because you read them once, and I look, and oh, that's highlighted, but this should be highlighted. But that's what I enjoy doing, and it's not popular. Nobody else is, except the Sisters of Ferdinand, they are, and the priests. Just recently, and I'm really digressing, but there was a man who was an abbot at St. Meinrad, and I have a friend that works in the infirmary as a nurse, and he's there, and she said, “Oh, I told him I know you,” and he said he would love to get to go… I took him out to eat, and he sent a card back, how much he enjoyed that. All those little things, they just, and it was such a great conversation because he's so intelligent. We talked about the church, we talked about things that I disagree, and it was just, it was so good, and we're going to do it again.

Marino:            I think that's amazing. Well, I want to ask a few specific leadership questions here, and then we can finish up as well. You've, again, talked a lot about not really thinking of leadership per se, but thinking more about this idea of service. How did you come to that, or how did you let that guide you throughout your life? Was that a conscious decision, or was that just something that you felt was there for you?

Koch:               When you notified me and I read your stuff, and I thought, gosh, leadership. I guess I never really thought. I think I was one of those people that saw that something needed to be done, and then did it, and found a way with other people's help, like the Wisdom Program, or like Spencer County Regional Chamber of Commerce. I always say, I belonged to that for 100 years, and I'm just going to be 94 years old. But they wanted to become a regional chamber because every little town had their chamber, but they weren't big enough to get much done. So I was head of the chamber at that time. That was an important thing to do, even though there were great people didn't want to do it, still don't, but it's a good idea because then you get more resources, and you can hire somebody to run it, and you can be a county rather than just Dale, Mariah Hill, which is hard work. There's great, great, a lot of jealousy and all that. But once again, it was like, okay, this is a good idea, and we should do this. And I think that's what I do. It's not so much thinking I'm leading. It's more that there's something that needs to be done, and then I do it, and I guess I'm leading. And when I think about it, I think about when I was in high school. And I did give some time to, what am I going to talk about? I found a lot to talk about. But like, I had so many meetings when I was in high school. I had council, English club, this club, that club, all these meetings. And then I would always wind up running them for some reason. And then I became a cheerleader, and I just loved being able to give people excitement, to stir them up, and so here's what I did. And my friend, I said, “Can you turn cartwheels?” “Yeah.” “Let's turn cartwheels.” We've never done cartwheels. And at cheer practice, there was, what do you call it? We had, before a ball game, we'd have a cheer, everybody'd come down, and you'd …

Marino:            Like a pep rally?

Koch:               Yeah, pep session. We turned cartwheels. Well, this Miss Weidman was the home ec teacher, an old maid lady and a wonderful person. We got called into the principal’s office for doing that. And he wouldn’t look at us. (laughs) But once again, why did I do that? I just thought we needed to get more pep. We just needed to do better than we were doing. Well, we got told what we had to wear if we were going to do cartwheels. And I think that has to be a DNA, an innate thing. Because I didn’t think of it as being a leader at all. When I go through the yearbook, you know, in all these clubs. Right now I have made plans for… I graduated 77 years ago from high school, 55 people in our class. We can only find five living. I know there are two living that mentally can’t come and one physically, so I think there are nine living. I’m getting them together. Nobody else is going to do it. I planned it, called them. I'm still trying to get… I tried one this morning. He doesn't answer the phone. I have cousins, German people, who live right in this area, who never get together. A lot of my friends have cousins. Two years ago, I said to my daughters, “I want to have a cousins party.” I went to The Chateau and I said, “I want to have a cousins party on this Sunday.” Well, we figured out a good day to do it from like 2:00 to 5:00, 3:00 to 6:00. I'll pay for it. We'll have food. We want everybody to bring pictures. I've done it now three years in a row, but nobody else does it. But I have the class reunion. So that's the it needs to be done kind of thing, I think. And it doesn't occur to me that you wouldn't do that. My cousin was at The Chateau Friday where I take two people for lunch. I take one and the other one shows up with her son, but they're younger. Well, one's older, one's younger. And so my cousin was in there and I had called him and said… some of them don't have email addresses. So we talked about it and he told me… I have to find out who's coming so we can plan for how much food. And he said, “Oh, they're really excited.” And I thought, great. And the first one we had, there were a lot of pictures and people talking. I wanted each family to talk about Grandma Schue, Apollonia, because I want her not to be forgotten. And that was really interesting. But it's just that when I think something's important and I think it ought to be done, I just do it. I don't say, why don't they do it?

Marino:            It sounds like to me like leadership through action and that you're the one that is going to step into that role.

Koch:               Yeah, exactly. I hope, and it's one of the things I really work on, I don't stand up there at these cousins parties and talk a lot. They want to talk to each other and that's what they should do. I was thinking about it. Should I say, “Well, who can tell me anything about Grandpa Schue?” or maybe something to get us started? But it doesn't have to be formal. Found that out in that Wisdom Program. We had a lot of speakers and things and then they put on their evaluation:  We wish we had more time to talk to each other. So really that's what's important, I think.

Marino:            Well, you've at least sort of answered this for yourself perhaps, but I'm interested in larger thought about this. Do you think leaders are born or made?

Koch:               I wish I could think of this quote. I think there's a thing that says talent is given, but action is...

Marino:            I've heard that too.

Koch:               Yeah, there's something. I think there is, it's kind of like alcoholism. (laughs) It can either be genetic or… it's either one way or another. You say, I will never do that or you go the same direction. And once again, I go back to, sometimes I'm a little jealous of these people. Like when I said to one, “Well, I just don't know this priest. He's just so into all these practices that you're supposed to do and all this formality.” “Oh, I just don't bother with that kind of stuff.” I mean, and I understand them. I understand that, but I just can't do that. And I don't know why exactly. I don't even think my brother would. I think my brother was completely different. Like I told you about high school, quiet, got through high school, went into the Navy, was successful in the Navy and learned a lot. He became a medic. But I think a lot of it is really, really genetic or familial or DNA, but it's whether you really... I hate to see it wasted, I think. Sometimes because you're a woman, it's wasted. Sometimes because of who you marry, it's wasted. All kinds of different things. And I've been really lucky. One time when my kids were all swimming -- they all were swimmers in high school -- and I said to my husband, “Did you see that swim of Kristi or Natalie, one of the girls?” He said, “Pat, nobody saw it.” I was turning cartwheels on the... But he didn't say don't do that. That looks stupid. He just said, “Pat, everybody was looking at you.” But that was good. And I said that many times, I was so fortunate, because I didn't tell you this and it's true, I was pregnant with Will ten months after we were married. And he said, “I want you to go to the board of directors meeting.” And I said, “Really? In Evansville with your brothers and sisters?” “Yeah.” And so we stopped at his mom and dad's house. We went out to the board of directors meeting. They had bologna and cheese and bread, sisters and brothers. And I'm new. I'm new. They knew my dad. They were happy Bill finally got married. And then Malcolm, the second oldest, who later just… I loved him, but blunt and to the point. And he looked at me and said, “What are you doing here?” And I said to him, “Bill asked me to come and I'm coming.” And we were friends after that. And his dad said to me, “What do you think about Bill's dream of building a village, a town with lakes and golf course and recreation and three lakes?” He asked my opinion. We were such a team and it was allowed because I think they knew I was going to… Even his mother said, “Oh, I'm so happy that Bill got married.” But I think it comes, it's there and people pick up on it. Even some of his family will write me about the death of the two children. You're so strong and we're so proud. We just don't know how you're doing it and things like that. Bill and I went to Evansville one time and asked for some money because we didn't have the money to do what we wanted to do. And one of the boys in charge said, “That place will never go anywhere.” We came home determined to make it go and we did. And so being a team and having that great support, I always said, and Kristi has a marriage like that, we're not like, what are you doing? Where have you been? It was always, I was who I was and that was okay with him. He was who he was and that was okay with me. And then we would have discussions about business where we disagreed, but we didn't break up our marriage or yell at each other. We figured out a way that's the best way to do whatever it was. So I was very fortunate. It didn't happen in all marriages, not at that time. That's 65 years ago and it was a lot different. The man was the boss, period. Right? And so I was very fortunate. I really was. Yeah.

Marino:            Definitely. Well, you've talked about books several times throughout the interview. Are there any books that have impacted your leadership style or your philosophy of life or anything?

Koch:               It's changed. I used to be much more… well, Bill was a really staunch Republican and he was friends with… we went to, I think, four inaugurations, inaugural balls and, you know, private planes. And it was important to me and that's not anymore. And it's getting older and not understanding. I mean, I'm so lucky. I was in John F. Kennedy's office and Bill was on a committee. Here we go again. He was on the Lincoln Club. I don't know. It was a group of men, a couple anyway. And they worked to make Lincoln a national memorial in Lincoln City. There's a Lincoln State Park, and now there’s a national park. And that was his project. I had nothing to do with that. So he got an invitation with the people on the committee to come up to Washington for John F. Kennedy to sign this bill that makes Lincoln a national memorial. I know I had Will. Will was a baby and we were in Florida when we were… my mother and dad were there just on vacation. And so Bill said, “Why don't you come along to Washington?” And I said, “Well, I'm not invited.” “Oh, you could come.” Again, that's really unusual. And so I was nursing him, which was difficult. And my mother was there, and her sister and husband were there. So I knew Will as a baby was fine. He was born in October and this was, I think, February. And we flew to Washington. We had a beautiful hotel room. And the morning he got picked up in a limousine, he said, “Come along.” I said, “Okay.’ So I got dressed and came along. Once again, would many men do that? I doubt it. I doubt it. I would have stayed in the hotel and he'd have gone and come back. So we get in the limousine. We pick up a senator or somebody else on the committee before JFK was assassinated. And I thought, oh, well, we'll get stopped on the way in. They waved us in. We get inside and they take us into the cabinet room. All these names on all these chairs. And I think they'll tell me I have to stay here. And Evelyn Lincoln was his secretary. And she walked out and all these committee guys walked in, my husband, got behind John F. Kennedy sitting at the desk with the pens like they do now. Except now they have an auto pen. Didn't know that. But anyway. And Evelyn Lincoln said, “Come on in.” I was in the corner. I couldn’t go back, I wasn’t on the committee, so that was fine. But I was in the Oval Office and here’s John F. Kennedy. So I stood there while he’s signing and he's handing the pen back and he’s signing. I have that picture. I think it’s in here. And he got finished and he said, “I have an extra pen, what will I do with it?” And one of those people, I think it might have been Vance Hartke, who was our senator, said, “Give it to Mrs. Koch.” He got up from his desk, walked over and handed me that pen. I’ve told this story a million times. I wrote everything down. I have that history. Charismatic. Sexy as all get out. I felt like I had been x-rayed from top to bottom. I’m not kidding you. I mean just… It was electric. And he went back to his desk. So he finished. That was the last pen. And he congratulated everybody. Didn’t really spend a lot of time. Of course the photographers and he dismissed them and they all left. Then he said, “Okay, it's time to go, but you wait,” Bill and me. And he had us wait and he stopped and he said, “Would you like a tour of the White House?” and my husband said yes. Private tour of the White House everything. I was 29 years old a baby in Florida. I wanted to get back to Florida. I was so naive that I thought that everybody probably gets to do this. I didn't know any better. It was just like oh this is great. I don't really remember anything afterward. I think we went back the next day, flew back, and it was over. But it was like if Bill hadn't invited me to go, and once again it's him that really made a lot of difference, but I made a lot of difference in his life too because of I think he really realized his potential more after we were married and got more focused on what he wanted to do.

Marino:            What do you think it is that made him realize that potential? I mean what is it that you were…?

Koch:               Well, I think it's both of us working together and my drive probably, and I think it’s family stuff again. It’s family businesses I think, and his family is wonderful, but in a family business some people die and some people flourish, really and truly. And that happened in that family too because of not being able to develop, but see he got away from that and was able with me to do what he wanted to do without somebody else saying this is how you have to do it.

Marino:            Interesting. Well, you have authored several books yourself.

Koch:               Yeah, I wrote them all down. They're all about Santa Claus. Here's Santa's Daughter, Letters to Santa Claus, which is that one. Images of America, this is about the town. And then there's one about Holiday World, but I don't have that one, I can't figure that out. And then there's a cookbook from the ladies of the town because cooking is very important to German people. I didn't really realize that until you asked the question. And right now I'm going through great drama because I don't do a computer. I started a long time ago and then I found out that you can start and then it changes and it changes and it changes, and I just am not interested. I'm not. I'm just not, and I don't have to be. I can get somebody to do that. I do an iPad. I do an iPad and I text on my phone. But I just wish we communicated like we're communicating. And we're not doing that. When I go out to dinner and there are four people and they're all on their phones, I want to just scream, because we're losing so much. And now with artificial intelligence, I just have no idea where… Dan did a book about a water park and it's beautiful. I'm so proud of him. He also did a drawing of the statue and I didn't know he had any of that. That's not from me. I said, “Gosh these drawings.” It's artificial intelligence in that book. It's all the art. It's beautiful. I had no idea. And that's awful too I think. The one thing I think is really terrible in our world is lack of privacy. It's such an invasion I think that you know where everybody is, what they're doing, where they live. It's scary I think. But I don't want to go back to horse and buggy days. So I really don't know.

Marino:            It's complicated, to say the least.

Koch:               Isn't it?

Marino:            Yeah, it really is.

Koch:               And you know people are always talking about the kids. And yes I do think that a lot of young people do not have a work ethic, but a lot of them do. And so what are we talking about the ones who don't? Well, I can tell you this. When I was real active at Holiday World, there were young people from these Catholic communities that were working two jobs and going to college. That's that German thing that you work hard to get what you want. Now the oldest son still gets it, that's part of that too. But anyway, when I go to the grocery store and there's a young man who was just recently… what was the latest holiday? Fourth of July. And he took my groceries out. I asked his name. He's going to college, and I said, “Are you going to work tomorrow? It’s going to be Fourth of July.” “Oh yeah, I'm going to work, I want to go to college.” Probably means he has to work to help pay. I gave him a good tip and I said, “Thank you. Thank you for working tomorrow.” There will be people… even the fact the grocery is open is a great thing, and there will be people that want groceries. But he's working. And how many people talk about this young man? I was at a school. They have a wonderful, wonderful program. They're sophomores in South Spencer High School and Heritage Hills High School. I don't know what it's called, but they have all the sophomore boys at one high school and all the sophomore girls at another high school and they ask people like me to come around and sit at a table, and the girls make a trip around and rotate. They have veterinarians, they have bankers, all women for the girls to talk about what they could do. Chiropractors, everything in the books, all kinds of things, cosmetologists, business people, women that farm. It's wonderful, because I found so much out when they come. And we ask these kids, “What do you want to be?” There's a girl down there that wants to be in the FBI. I had no clue. Another girl wants to be a pilot. Who's helping them? But the point is I think that they get to talk to different people and get told. And I gave a talk and told them how I was told “why does a girl want to go to college” and I found a way. My message is always don't stop because somebody says maybe you shouldn't do it or you can't do it. You can find a way. Ask for help. You can get it. Then I told the vice principal who talked to me, when I looked on the wall there's all these athletes, there's nobody that was a national merit scholar, there's nobody that's valedictorian or salutatorian. What about academics huh? If you're a good football player, your picture is up there. Is that not nuts? It's great to be a good football player. I'm proud of that. But we also need people who are going to make a difference in science and in literature and in art and whatever. Somebody wants to be an artist; are you going to say “you're not going to make any money,” you're going to say “follow your dream, do the best you can.” It's not about money, it's about being happy and succeeding in your life. But anyway, I think that's a great program, I really do. I just learn so much from those kids.

Marino:            Yeah, it sounds like it. I think that there's, I'm sure, a lot that goes into being an integral part of a family business and I think there's probably moments where you can step in as a leader in that but it's all the more complicated because the family is also involved. So can you tell me maybe about a time in sort of the business part where you have had to resolve conflicts or crisis within the business and the family?

Koch:               Yes. One time, yeah, this happened. It was about marketing and advertisements. My two sons, Will and Dan, they figured out how much of the business probably was attributed to my presence in percentages. I don't know the reason, but I know that I felt that I wasn't being listened to, and I just decided to go home for a while and just not come back to work and just let myself have time. It was a mistake, I should have talked to Will but I went home. About the second day, I get “Will's calling us wanting to know what's the matter, why aren't you at work?” I really was shaken up, I was. I felt bad, and you don't want to feel bad. It was a minor thing, I think. I really cannot put a finger on what it was, but it was something that, you know, it hurt my spirit. So he came up to the house and we talked about it, and he cried. And it was painful and it was good, and I was glad I did it then. He would never hurt anybody ever, but he had without knowing it. So that was one example. And we worked it out, and he made the move. I think I would have come back after a week, but it wouldn't have been the same if we hadn't talked about it. And then one time, and she's still alive, the person that was in charge of doing the ads and publicity and stuff, I got put aside for a commercial or they were doing videos. And I was really upset, I was hurt again. I felt like Bill and I were such a team, and I think this woman had Will way up here, I know that, and I was just kind of the other person. I really was hurt by that, and then I was told, “Well, Will's in charge of the park and you have…” I had already done the museum “and you're in charge of the museum.” Well, we hadn't decided that and it was hurtful. I didn't do well with that, I didn't. Now Dan, for instance in Alabama, and I was down there from ‘14 to ‘19 and then COVID came along and I turned 90 and I couldn't have my 90th birthday, which upset me, but my doctor daughter said, “You can't do that.” So I'm going to do my 95th next year. But anyway, he's been different. He wanted me with the commercials. He told me, “People love you, Mom.” And we'd have a good time. We'd make funnel cake and I'd say, “You didn't put enough sprinkles” and, you know, be a mother, and people just loved it. And he'd get nervous about commercials. I never got nervous. I always just did it myself and if it came out okay, fine. And he'd mumble up because he'd get worried about it. But we were much better that way. And he still calls me and gives me reports and asks my opinion. But we don't have as much in between people down there as we had there. There were more people in different departments that were in charge than there are down there. Like he has human resources, front to gate security, you know, but not that many because it's a much smaller park.

Marino:            How has it evolved that, I think, either your granddaughters or maybe great granddaughters have come to run the business? How was the sort of succession plan for that?

Koch:               Well, Michella, you're asking a very hard question. The way I understand it, by that time, the kids were the board, my five children. And I didn't interfere with that. And I was told this, by a couple of kids, that they had talked about succession and that their agreement was that a grandchild would go to college and if they wanted… Okay, they would go to college. My husband made 529C plans to pay for all bachelor's degrees. I wish he hadn't. I think they should have worked, but I went along with that. And so when they finished, if they wanted to come back to the park, they had to go off and work for somebody else than family. I think a couple of people said two years. I was told Will said three years. I think that's an excellent idea. And then after that time, if they wanted to stay where they worked, you know, if they had become law like Dan and he just wanted to do it, fine. If they wanted to come back, you can come back, but they'd work under me or Dan or Will. And we'd decide if they were fit to work in the park and what department. I'm told that they had had talk about that. It had never been written. It had never been made legal. It had never been told to the in-laws. And, you know, this is recording. Things change when you have in-laws, when you have grandparents, when you have…. When they are a mother and father and five children, it's one way. When different people enter that picture, it's different. It's like a meeting. When you have the same people and somebody else comes, it's different, right? And so I'm told that supposedly they were going to have a meeting the day after Will died to make that the way they had planned it. That wasn't done. And so Will was president of the park. And I understand that his wife would want and think that that should go to his children. I understand that. But that wasn't the way it was planned. It was never made legal, permanent, or whatever you want to call it. So that's what caused a big fracture in the company, in the family. And there was a lawsuit and the park went to Will's family. I will admit that Dan was heartbroken because he loved the park. He had worked with his brother. Even when he wasn't there, when he was an attorney, they talked every day. Philip had gone off on his own and started the campground and the Christmas store. The ones who are smart go off on their own and get their own little... He did wonderful. He did the Christmas store and the campground. He was going to do more. He had all kinds of plans for a village and all kinds of things. Kristi had decided to be a doctor, and Natalie had her MBA, got married, and then is on a farm. So it was really... I think Dan was the most affected. And it's been very... Just the death of his brother was very, very hard. And then losing... Feeling like he wasn't part of the park was very hard. And he hasn't... He hasn't overcome it. It's been very, very hard. I'm mature enough and old enough that I just know there are things you can't change. So there are two granddaughters there. There were two husbands, two in-laws, but now one of the family has bought one of the campgrounds. And so one of the in-laws is there. He's a nice guy. I hope he's going to do well. But I can see there was a change. The other man is a wonderful person who worked at other parks, carpet parks, and knows the amusement business and really likes it. So he's chief operating officer. So I think it's okay. I know it's okay. People say it's running very well. I have been back, but not often. It's painful. And then when there were still enough people that had worked for me, they would come out, and that puts on me and I don't want that. I still get complimentary tickets. I'm proud of it. I'm proud of them for what they're doing. It's not all the way I would do it, but it's a different time, a different age, and they're doing great. Will's death was probably the most... What word can I use? The thing that most influenced what happened in our family. His death just created so much chaos and heartache and misunderstanding and a lot, and you can't bring it back. And he wouldn't want that. We were even going to other parks giving advice on family businesses. But this story is not unusual. We have a group that meets, 10 parks. It's dying because family parks aren't succeeding. They cannot afford to put up big roller coasters. There's too much overhead. All the government regulations are huge. The insurance is huge. People are still suing. And there's one in Texas, there's one in Tennessee Grandpa started. They're all parks that Grandpa started. And then it went down to the grandchild. And then it went to this, and it finally just doesn't make it anymore. There's conflict or they're not interested. I know one park that it was always women and their picture... The mother and two daughters, and their picture was on an Amusement Today magazine. It's in Tennessee. And Grandma or Great-Grandma had started it. Grandpa built the flume, the log flume that comes down. There's a lake there. Everything, you know, just like us, it was hands-on. And so one of them, the mother came and brought her granddaughter and she said, “She's going to take it over. My daughter's running it now, but she's...” No. That girl went to New York and has never come back. So that's what's happening. I think part of the problem is just what's happening now. We're having so much rain. Alabama and Indiana are getting hit by rain. You're not taking enough money to pay the insurance and the labor and the water and the electricity and the lawsuits and everything. You have to have a lot of people to do that, especially when you're doing free drinks and that. Really. I mean, you really almost think maybe we ought to start charging. I wouldn't do it and I don't think they're going to. But I think it's probably the younger generation seeing. And then there's another park, once again, had two brothers and they bought out the younger brother. There's too much conflict. It's hard. The one that had two girls after grandma, mother, two girls; one girl is the one that really worked at it. The other one wasn't well and she died. Now this one, I mean, she's just working her tail off and not doing well and probably will try... Some of them are trying to sell, but they can't get the money they need. One of them, the grandson died and so the widow was left there. It wasn't her park. And so she couldn't sell that park. And so she, I think smartly, started selling off refrigerators, air conditioners, rides that can be moved, whatever she could do to get money and has a job now, and her children are educated and they're away doing work. But it's evolving into that small family parks can't make it. They just can't make it. I used to go to meetings. I haven't been for a long time. But you just heard that story over and over and over. I think we're unusual in that we are in, well, Grandpa Koch, Bill, Will and now, see, we're in fourth generation and I think it's going well. Will there be another generation? First of all, they're not having as many kids. Right now I have three grandkids that are children of the two girls. One has two children, one has one; one boy and two girls. I don't know. I mean, I don't think anybody should say to a child, “You have to work in the family business so there you go.”

Marino:            It’s hard to force their hand to do such a thing.

Koch:               They want to be what they want to be. Will's son went to New York and, you know, is happy doing what he's doing, and that's good I think. I don't think he's involved physically in the business. He may be part of the board, I don't know. Anyway, was that an answer?

Marino:            Yes, yes it was. Thank you. Well, what's a lesson you've learned along your journey and through your career?

Koch:               Oh boy. I think I've learned that I'm not in control of everything. I think I used to be a control freak. And it worked. But I was lucky enough to also get that service mentality from the Daughters of Charity and my dad. So I think it was better, but I'm still… I'm a scheduler. I mean, like I was going to be here ahead of time in case you got here ahead of time, and I was going to be prepared, right? And I mean, every day I have my breakfast at a certain time, I have my lunch at a certain time, I have my evening meal at a certain time, I go to read, and I go to bed at a certain time. And that's my life and that's not everybody's life. And I've learned it doesn't have to be everybody's life. But I don't function well if I can't have that kind of life. I've learned, though, one of the biggest lessons, I didn't do well in this, but it's a lesson I have learned. And that is to just shut up and listen. And I said this the other day to this nurse friend, “I'm getting more annoyed about things as I get older.” I really am. And I can tell. I know I am. And I hate it. I don't want to be annoyed. So instead of a rebuttal, I just stay quiet. You're not going to change somebody's religion. You're not going to change somebody's politics. You're not going to change the way somebody's raising their kids. Just listen. And when I used to give these hospitality talks, I'm a big one for mottos, and I had a bunch when I gave my talks, and I'm going to put one… The one everybody remembers, be a person of integrity. Bill Koch was such a person of integrity. There was no cheating, there was no scamming, there was no hiding. It was the way it was. And then I say, be a person of integrity. Integrity is like virginity. You either have it or you don't. Do you know that nobody ever forgets that?

Marino:            I wonder why.

Koch:               It shocks the whole world.

Marino:            But a very apt lesson.

Koch:               And they come up to me and tell me that they do, they remember. And the other one, and I have all these talks, I give them to women, Women of Wisdom, Women at Work, older people. And I hope somebody reads them some days because I'm not doing them anymore. I do short talks but nothing long. But listen to people. Do you know, Michella, people don't listen? And my thing about that, I think I read this and stole it, but when I used to give the talks and somebody would set up this video for me, it showed the word listen, and then I would say, “And you can't listen if you're not silent. Silent and listen have all the same letters in them. They're just in different places. So they go together.” And how many times when I'm out and I'm talking and somebody interrupts or when I said just lately, “Well I'm just not a fan of this priest.” “Oh, Pat, for goodness sake, why are you bothering about that?” No answer. There's no point in it. If you don't see what I see, there's no point in it, right? So that's been a huge lesson. Now doing it is hard. Every time when you're talking, you're thinking about what you want to say, right? I mean, we all do it. We all do it. I was thinking about it last night. And this person was just talking and talking and talking, and I was really tired of listening. But I knew it was important that she talk. It takes so much discipline. Then you go home and you think, should I have said something or shouldn't I have said something? But I think those are the two lessons. I really am glad that I got these three C’s. And I read so much that I've just got too much underlined and saving on pieces of paper. When I die, they're just going to have a great time. But you didn't cause it, you can't control it, and you can't cure it. Three C's. Used to think I could fix it. Not always you can't. You can maybe help, but those three C's are really good, I think. But telling yourself you didn't cause it and you can't control it and you can't cure it frees you up to move on to do what you can do for somebody or something else. And that's a great thing about getting old, I think. I do. I used to love flashy jewelry and furs and things like that. And my husband, the sweet, one time, I'm standing at the kitchen and I've got a baby on one arm and I'm stirring something. And Bill comes in and says, “I have a surprise for your birthday.” And I go out and there's a red and white Cadillac in the garage. I mean, I was just very lucky, very lucky. And I was just thrilled to death. Now I don't care. I've already given my two daughters rings because I don't want to wear them anymore. They're too showy, you know? So it's great. It's much better than that in-between age, not when we were a teenager, but when we were doing well and we were going to big events with important people, you had to dress right. You had to wear some jewelry and show up. But it's very freeing. And I can say, I don't like to cook and I'm not going to cook, right? I mean, it doesn't make me good or bad or in between. If you'd like to cook, go for it. I'll come eat your food.

Marino:            I think it's the better end of the deal there, right? If you could describe your leadership legacy or maybe even your service legacy in one word or phrase, what would it be?

Koch:               I think it's seeing my children doing things for people without anybody knowing they're doing things for people, not getting the acclamation I get, which I think is great. I know of a lot of good things. And both of my daughters, Dan, Will, I mean, they've contributed so much and they do it very privately and quietly. I mean, sometimes their name shows up somewhere. But just little things. And I hate… I don't know if they'll hear this, but Kristi, the second girl, her daughter got lymphoma, which is cancer of the lymph nodes, when she was eight years old. And she wound up in Cincinnati Children's Hospital and we thought we were going to lose her. And it was horrible. And my daughter was there all the time, and, being a doctor, I was in ICU with Marie, was her name. She was so sick. She was in intensive care, keeping her blood pressure up. And the doctors were talking to my daughter and the tears were just, she wasn't screaming, the tears were just running down her face. It was a horrible thing. And Marie lived and Marie's in medical school. She's interning. I found out that they helped pay for a child that was being raised by his grandparents and helped those grandparents so they could be at the hospital. Nobody knew. They just did it. And the other daughter, they've done those kind of things too. Dan's way too generous without thinking about it, about helping people, letting a friend work for him and, you know, things. And Will was just a sweet, wonderful person. Philip had so many friends. And once again, I mean, his friends were just his classmates and ordinary people that he… I think that's, that they do it… And what Bill and I did is so known because it's so big. It's a big park. It's a big community with three lakes and a golf course. And they're doing things, I think, that aren’t out there. And that's a good way to do it. Right? I think. I mean, I think it's really better. And as I told you before, I think the worst thing about losing the two boys was the pain, but also the contribution they could have made to the whole community and the state and everything and the plans they had. But some of them are being done. Not all of them, but some of them are. So.

Marino:            Well, I mean, I feel like I could probably talk to you for another five hours, but we're getting on here for a while. But given that we are sitting here in the old post office, right, which is now used as the letter center for children, I'd love it if you could just tell me a little bit about your work in service in that area.

Koch:               Oh, I love that. In fact, I took… We have four form letters plus my dad's letter. It started out with my dad going around with his car. Then I was over in the shopping area and started my first museum with just a little bit of displays. And then we had a little place that we answered letters. And the man just died who helped me get that ready. And do you know in his obituary, they put in his obituary that he helped Pat Koch with her work in history, which I was so tickled to know that they thought about that. But anyway, so I picked up answering letters when I was 12 years old when my dad would bring letters home. Then I went off to be a sister, and then after I was a sister and I went back to St. Louis to work to make a little money and find myself again, I didn't do letters. And then I came back and married Bill Koch, so we're back to letters again. Whenever I did all this and I got this, this was the house of dolls at Holiday World. I asked Will if I could have this building and he said yes. And so we had a place, 14 chairs. And I organized it like I usually do. And people would come in. We get letters. If you can look up there, that whole bin is full of letters already. And there are letters from foreign countries. Last year we had letters from 21 different foreign countries. Last year we did over 23,000 letters. Now you can't write 23,000 letters, besides the fact that's a big burden. It's all volunteer and everything is free. So we did it over there and it wasn't… so when we moved here had a nice room that we can close up and be private. We don’t want to ever let children in here. We re-edit the letters that are form letters. One of them says one thing special, it says sometimes we cannot give you everything you want. And then the rules are up there, my friend did it, we have to have, I can't read it from here, but we have to have a return address to reply. Read every letter, it must be read. Always print, you have to print, no cursive, they can't read it. Be sure you print the child or adult's name and check on their spelling, because there's different ways to spell Megan, there's different ways, and they know that. You write it the way Mrs. Koch wants it, which is dear, there's a room at the top, that's called the salutation, people don't know that anymore. You put the child's name and a comma, and I have to teach that over and over and over and over. Sometimes they put the comma after the dear. What? No. And then you’ve read the child's letter, so it says things in the middle of the letter, and one of them says sometimes I can't give you everything you want. And then at the bottom, you write a personal print, a personal note that pertains to the letter, so they know their letter was read. Like if they say I hate my sister, Santa wants you to love your sister. I hate school, well I hope you learn to like school, just something, I have to be careful, because we had an older woman who’d ball people out, don't do that or whatever. I try to check every once in a while. So there are lots of important things about it. We have a job for people, like we have SIRs, which is Southern Indiana Rehab, that can come in and put on stamps and seal letters, and we do that just to help them to feel good. But Kathleen is doing great in that she has, what do you call it, digitalized, she has a sign-up Genius now, and that's so helpful, because we used to just have people walk in, there's only 14 seats, and it's crowded, and now we know. She signs up so many people, if we're full and you don't take anymore, you'd get another day. Or I used to plan to be here after school for teachers or people that worked, and my daughters got mad because I was driving home in the dark, so now I'm not allowed to be here after dark. But we try to get those people in. So the people that do it, Michella, love it. We cry, we laugh, we can't read a name, we pass it around, somebody says this is Michaela, this is whatever, we share. We become a family, and everybody says once they do it, they want to come back. And we have companies that come, and so that's a whole day sometimes. As I said, I have strict rules. Even if you can't think of anything, it doesn't say anything in the letter that you can say, there's ideas up there, you don't say Merry Christmas. Keep being good, keep the spirit of Christmas. So give them ideas, even ho, ho, ho, if nothing else. But, oh my goodness, that goes all the time. But Natalie is part of it, her children have helped, now they're off to college, so they didn't help, but I think Natalie will continue it. It will continue. I was told many, many years ago that we could not… Dad used to take them out to people or to schools. A predator got a hold of a child's address or a name and something bad happened, and I got a call that we should not allow letters to go outside of the room. So that means you can't let them go. Old people say, “oh my husband and I will do them at home, we can do it while we're…” Well, maybe your brother will walk in and maybe he's a nut, you know, you just can't be sure. It would be helpful if we could send them home and get them done, but we can't. So it's changed. It's all here and it's all planned, and there are form letters, but they are personalized and we work hard at that. When we get up to crunch time, which is in December, and we want to get to them, I always say, don't write a book, just write a little line, because they have to go out. We have to get them to the post office by 2.30 so they can go out that day. And we did over 23,000 last year. So they have to be addressed and they have to be stamped, not stamped, they have to be sealed, and then he takes them over and puts that Christmas stamp on them, and that's work for him, and he doesn't want any help. So it has to be organized, and I go around and check. And I hate to say this, but one time we had a mother that called us or wrote us or emailed us and said somebody had put on the letter, you know there's no Santa Claus, so we were pretty sure it was a young person possibly that thought it was funny. You know, and I'm glad we have exchange students from different countries, and they're usually very serious, but I have to say that, I have to say, now this is not the time to think you're being funny and saying, oh there's no Santa Claus or something, you have to realize that this is something really important to a child. Then I sit down there where I can see out to see who's coming, and I go through several letters to check, because you have to make sure that they're printing it, make sure they've done it, it has to be done right. Sometimes I hate it, because I don't think people are used to having that much, I don't know what to call it, but it should be done correctly, it's important. I come every day, and I come Saturdays and Sundays, nobody, well, some people do. I just talked to a friend and said, “I saw all those letters up there, can you come in and we can sit down and get a head start?” We don't send them out until… There's a program in high school, it used to be only high school, now it's college too, we let somebody design that stamp that goes on it, and then that's the stamp we use. So that gets put on December 1st, so we don't send any out until December 1^st. It takes a long time to mail nowadays, really bad, really bad, so that's a problem. We were getting letters last year that were sent out in time to get there for Christmas, but they didn't get to us, so we designed a different letter saying Santa had already gone back to the North Pole, and we couldn't get it done, because we didn't want that kid to be disappointed. It's work, but it's fun, it's sad, and it should be done, I think. I think it's important. I hope it continues to be important.

Marino:            Yeah. Well, like I said, we have talked about many things, and I feel like we could probably talk even longer, but I want to be cognizant of everyone's time, but what have I not asked? Is there anything that you feel like we haven't talked about that you would really like to share?

Koch:               One thing that I think about all the time, and it goes back to Spencer County Regional Chamber of Commerce and politics in a way, is that it's so hard to get one town to be happy that another town is doing well. We've started what I suggested, which we call Talk of the Town. So you go to this little town that's doing something really cool, and we congratulate them and say how great we think that is, and we say, “Can we help you?” I mean, Holiday World is a success, and it was bringing a million people, which is a great thing for taxes, which is a great thing for lots of things. Don't be jealous of it. Be glad your kids and grandkids can work there, maybe even your grandma. Support it. Dale got a, what do you call it, a pad where they have a few little items that kids can come and play in the water.

Marino:            Splash pad?

Koch:               I told them how happy I am. The woman that's the secretary for the town worked on that and got it done. Don't be saying, why'd they get that pad? No, glad they got it. Some of those kids will never make it to Holiday World or a water park. Why aren't we of that kind of thought, that if we just work together, and then you find out that some politician or somebody is keeping some town from getting something that they should get or whatever, but I guess that's just territorial. You want yours to succeed and not somebody else's, but I don't know that it'll change.

Marino:            Do you think people need more of a service mindset? What makes you think it won't change?

Koch:               I think the realization, I just got… from Ferdinand, they're going to get a German… they're doing great. Ferdinand is a great community, and they have great people. They have a historical society, and they're going to build a thing that they do in Germany, it's called a pyramid. So they send me a letter for a donation, and the letter underlined, this will contribute to the tourism in the whole area, making sure I notice that. And so I think it's that kind of thing that I try to support, but they have degrees, and I know you do this when you're raising money, here's platinum, and then gold, and then silver, and then bronze. And I'm helping support the park, and I'm helping this. I mean, we don't charge, and I think everybody thinks I have unlimited, but I don't, and so I'm agonizing over that, but I want to support them. Friday night, a group in town is starting an arts committee, and they're probably right. We just really don't have… We do here, in the church we have a person that we’ve had violinists, we’ve had harpists, we have bell ringers, we have storytellers. So I think we do, but I don’t know if people know that we do. But they want to do something at the town hall with a tree of some kind that they want to… And I went to that meeting after having been working all day and really rather staying home just to show that I supported it. And the women came up and thanked me for coming. They did, because they knew that’s important. And they have good attendance. I don’t know where it will go, I’m not sure how it will… but there are some smart women working on it. So I think it’ll be okay. But when we first got into what we were going to do, mostly Christmas Lake Village caused the biggest commotion because somebody got the idea it was a retirement community. At the church in Dale, it was said, “When Kochie gets a hold of everything, there won't be anything left of Dale.” Now there were a lot of people in Dale working over here. But that sort of thing. It's not understanding that if we succeed, they'll succeed. Your taxes will be lower. You'll have people that are going to get gas at your gas station if they're going that way. All those things. So I think it's always going to be that way because I think jealousy and envy is one of the biggest things that impedes people getting things done. It's too bad. And I'm not perfect about it either. You know, I want Santa Claus to have lots of things. I'm glad for this arts thing. I told them that. But I guess we've always got that human nature in there that is hard. And we're trying. We're trying. That's all we… Literally, Michella, there's South Spencer and there's North Spencer. It's like the Mason-Dixon line. I swear. Really. When the Chamber of Commerce has events, there's a place kind of middle. But I understand, it's a long way. If it's down there, it's a long way. If it's up here, it's a long way. So it's still there. There's a beautiful museum down there in the Lincoln Pioneer Village. Big, big building and all these cabins. And I go down and try to sell my book and talk to people. And they're doing great. They have a great woman in charge of that. But it's hard to make it that everybody's supporting. But you can't support everything. I have to pick and choose. Yeah, definitely. I do.

Marino:            Well, any final words?

Koch:               No, thank you. Thank you for your time.

Marino:            Yeah, well, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Koch:               Are you going back?

Marino:            I am going to head back.

Koch:               Is it two hours or two and a half?

Marino:            It was about two hours and 40 minutes, give or take, just a little bit.

Koch:               That's what I thought.

Marino:            Yeah, not too bad. It's a really beautiful drive. Well, let's see here. We've missed lunch. I think that's true. It's about two o'clock.

Koch:               Your time, it'd be later.

Marino:            Yeah, that's probably about right.

Koch:               Yeah, it is two o'clock now.

Marino:            Well, I think those forms I need, and I can give you a copy of these here, too.

Koch:               Oh, I'm sorry. Did I? You need this? This is your stuff. Do you want this picture?

Marino:            Yeah, let me take a picture of that so we have a copy there.

Koch:               Which one?

Marino:            You can keep that one. Whichever one you want. Whichever one you prefer here.

Koch:               I like this one because it's the most recent, but it's not big enough, is it?

Marino:            Well, I think we can... Let me get a picture on my phone and see, because you need this copy, right?

Koch:               Yeah.

Marino:            Okay. Let's see. I think I can get a good… I don't know if that'll be high enough quality, but we can try. I think that'll work. I'll try that one, and then we just want to fill out this form, and I've got copies if you want to fill out another copy, or I can photocopy them and email them or mail them back to you as well.

Koch:               Do that.

Marino:            Okay. Let me... You fill that out there.

Koch:               And did I have... I didn't take your pen, did I?

Marino:            No, no, no. I have mine right here. I can fill that out. Signature of narrator. You can do that. And then this one right here is the informed consent.

Koch:               I have to sign that?

Marino:            Just right here.

Koch:               Okay. And do you know that we have a Fontanini nativity scene in our church?

Marino:            No.

Koch:               You know Fontanini?

Marino:            I don't know if I...

Koch:               It's an Italian sculpture, and it was donated to me many years ago. It was found in a warehouse, and the person wants to be anonymous. And it is an Italian sculpture that was started in the 1400s in Italy, and the person that started it was named Emmanuel. And the person who named our town was the postmaster from Fulda, and his name was Nikolaus Fischer. So we've got magic going on.

Marino:            I think you do.

Koch:               Narrator, signature, person.

Marino:            That one would be mine. Yeah.

Koch:               Above that or below it?

Marino:            Wherever is fine.

Koch:               I always write Pat, but should I write Patricia?

Marino:            Either is fine there, too.

Koch:               And this is 7, 18, 19?

Marino:            19 is the date today. And then I'll make copies of these and mail them back to you. Okay. Well, thank you so much.

Koch:               Well, you're very welcome. I hope, God knows where it'll go or who'll get mad about it, but whatever.

Marino:            We can't always control those things.

Koch:               I'll be all right. You know what? The employees, I love my people that I've worked with at the park, they'd say, “You don't have to wonder what Mrs. Koch thinks she'll tell you.” I said, “That's a compliment.”

Marino:            Yeah. I was going to say, isn’t that the best way to be, really?

Koch:               You don't have to worry about it. She'll be honest, right?

Marino:            Yeah.

Koch:               Are these your keys? These are my keys.

Marino:            Those are yours.

Koch:               I wrote your name down on this separate piece of paper with your telephone number.

Marino:            You can certainly keep that.

Koch:               So how many people have you interviewed?

Marino:            Well, for this position, you were my first.

Koch:               Oh.

Marino:            Now, I've interviewed dozens and dozens of people before.

Koch:               Wow. Did somebody tell you to interview me?

Marino:            Well, the directors of the Leadership, I'm not sure who exactly makes that decision, but they were the ones who reached out first. And so, yeah, they had told me about that. And I was very excited about that because a few years ago when I was at the Bureau, we had done a short podcast on the history of Santa Claus Land. So I was somewhat familiar with the story. And so that was very exciting to me to be able to do that. But both my master's thesis and doctoral work were all oral history based. So I have a lot of experience in it.

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