An exceptional tribute

 

Church’s authorship disclosed shortly after his death in 1906, in what for the Sun was eloquent and highly unusual homage. “For almost a third of a century, Frank P. Church was a leading editorial writer in the service of this newspaper,” the Sun’s said in an editorial published 12 April 1906, adding: “At this time, with the sense of personal loss strong upon us, we know of no better or briefer way to make the friends of the Sun feel that they too have lost a friend than to violate custom by indicating him as the author of the beautiful and often republished editorial article affirming the existence of Santa Claus, in reply to the question of a little girl.”75 The Sun closed its editorial tribute by publishing the two concluding paragraphs of “Is There A Santa Claus?”

 

Announcing the authorship of its editorials was homage almost never paid by the Sun, which actively discouraged its reporters from considering themselves as newsroom aristocrats.76 “No man may pick and choose his assignments,” a press critic wrote about the Sun’s staff in 1909.77 Perhaps the only other time the Sun acknowledged the authorship of an unsigned editorial78 was in 1927, when Harold M. Anderson was identified as having written “Lindbergh Flies Alone,” a tribute to Charles A. Lindbergh’s solo trans-Atlantic flight. 79

 

It was doubtful whether Church would have appreciated the tribute of the Sun’s disclosing his authorship. He was a guarded man who respected—even cultivated—the anonymity of editorial-writing. According to J.R. Duryee, a friend whose testimonial the Sun published a few days after Church’s death, “Mr. Church by nature and training was reticent about himself, highly sensitive and retiring. Even with intimates he rarely permitted himself to express freely his inner thought.

 

“I doubt if an editor was ever more consistently loyal in maintaining the privacy of the sources of his journal’s statements,” Duryee wrote. “In our talks together, I have frequently referred to an editorial my intuition told me was from his pen, but never could induce him to own the writing.”80 Church’s unwillingness to acknowledge authorship of his editorials—as well as the Sun’s disinclination to promote its journalists as stars or celebrities—assuredly help explain the newspaper’s diffident embrace of “Is There A Santa Claus?”

 

Church died childless and left no known trove of papers or correspondence. The papers of his brother, William Conant Church, at the Library of Congress offer no insights about Francis Church or the timeless editorial he wrote. He and Virginia O’Hanlon never met. She earned master’s and doctoral degrees and for forty-three years was a teacher or principal in the New York City school system.81 Her marriage to Edward Douglas was brief and ended with his deserting her shortly before their child, Laura, was born.82 Virginia O’Hanlon kept the “Douglas” surname, however.

 

She came to embrace the recognition and modest fame associated with “Is There A Santa Claus?” She occasionally read the editorial at Christmas programs, such as that in 1933 at Hunter College, her alma mater.83 Virginia O’Hanlon lived to be 81 and her death at a nursing home in upstate New York in May 1971 was reported on the front page of the New York Times.84 Her daughter, Laura Temple, was briefly associated with the Sun, working at the newspaper’s advertising office for two years in the 1930s.85 “They all knew who I was,” Laura Temple was quoted years later as saying about the Sun staff. “And we all had the same feeling about the editorial that my mother had—that it was a classic.”86

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NOTES

 

75. Untitled editorial comment, New York Sun (12 April 1906): 8.

76. See A.B. [Arthur Brisbane], “Hon. Charles Anderson Dana,” Journalist (15 May 1897): 26. Brisbane’s article stated: “There is no aristocracy in the Sun building. The editor is the boss, and every other fellow is whatever his work can make him. There are no such things as ‘inferiors.’”

77. Will Irwin, “The New York Sun,” American Magazine 67 (January 1909): 305.

78. Five days after Dana’s death in 1897, the Sun published a signed editorial eulogizing the editor. See Mayo W. Hazeltine, “Charles Anderson Dana—A Personal Tribute,” New York Sun (22 October 1897): 6.

79. See “H. M’d. Anderson, Editorial Writer,” New York Times (27 December 1940): 27, and “Brilliant Names Dot Sun’s History,” New York Times (5 January 1950). Anderson’s editorial read, in part: “Alone? Is he alone at whose right side rides Courage, with Skill within the cockpit and Faith upon the left? Does solitude surround the brave when Adventure leads the way and Ambition reads the dials? Is there no company with him, for whom the air is cleft by Daring and the darkness made light by Enterprise?”

80. “A Clergyman’s Tribute to Francis P. Church,” New York Sun (15 April 1906): 6.

81. See, “Virginia, Now 70, Quits As Teacher,” New York Times (12 June 1959): 18.

82. See Kaplan, “A Child’s Query,” Boston Globe.

83. See “Santa Editorial to be Read Today,” New York Times (20 December 1933): 23.

84. “Virginia O’Hanlon, Santa’s Friend, Dies,” New York Times (14 May 1971): 1.

85. James Temple, telephone interview with author.

86. Cited in John O’Mahony, “Yes, Virginia, It Is a Classic Tale; Kin of Santa-Letter Girl Recall Touching Story,” New York Post (14 December 1997): 8.