Lots of national media attention in 1964 for Santa School in Albion
Reporters from Saturday Evening Post, Life Magazine, UPI, Australian Press, nearby newspapers sat in on sessions
Graduating students from Albion’s Santa Claus School serenade their “Dean” Charles W. Howard and his “First Assistant” Mrs. Ruth Howard, the seated couple at the center of this Medina Daily Journal-Register photograph, October 20, 1964.
By Catherine Cooper, Orleans County Historian
Illuminating Orleans, Vol. 3, No. 39
ALBION – This jolly group was assembled at a dinner held at the Apple Grove Inn, Medina on October 16, 1964, to celebrate their graduation from the Charles Howard Santa Claus School and to honor the school’s founder, Charles W. Howard and his wife, Ruth Howard.
Enrollment at the school, which was then in its 28th year of educating department store Santas, was limited to 20. Students from the Class of 1964 hailed from Detroit, Bay City, Michigan, and New York state. In many cases, stores paid the tuition, as they recognized that a graduate of the school was an asset.
Students received a well-grounded training in the philosophy and practice of portraying Santa Claus with integrity during their intensive week-long course. They also learned how to interact with children. Grade schoolchildren from Albion, under the direction of Mrs. Ruth Karns, interacted with the Santa trainees, while students from Medina, Albion and Holley participated in round table discussions.
The fine points of attire were also addressed, while Mrs. Ruth Hazard demonstrated gift wrapping and Mrs. Joy Merkel instructed Santas in the latest dance steps.
The school had elicited much publicity that year. Reporters from the Saturday Evening Post, Life Magazine, United Press International, area newspapers and even the Australian Press sat in on classes and reported on activities.
This celebratory dinner was held shortly before the Howards’ trip to Australia.
On October 25, 1964, the same week as the Journal-Register article, The Sydney Morning Herald of New South Wales, Australia, featured an article promoting their prospective visit. Farmers, a department store in the city, sought six candidates to train as Father Christmas. The store’s fashion coordinator said that the store was flying in “Santa Claus himself,” Mr. Charles Howard, from New York, to supervise the school, the first of its kind in Sydney.
A later article in the Sydney Morning Herald on November 10, 1964, featured an interview with Mrs. Howard, appropriately attributed as “director and instructor-in-chief at the Santa Claus School, Christmas Park, Albion, New York.”
The article continued: “Mrs. Howard is accompanying her husband on a Santa Claus inspection and briefing tour of Melbourne, Brisbane, and Sydney.”
A November article later that month in a Melbourne publication, The Age, described Howard as “principal of the only finishing school for Santas in the world.”
The Sydney Morning Herald reported on Mr. Howard’s death in May 1966.
