 THE ELF LOUISE
PROJECT
Thanks to donors and volunteers,
needy
children receive presents from Santa
Written by KAREN KOLIVOSKY
Photography by JEFFREY TRUITT
Two college students wandered
through darkened San Antonio
streets, one holding a flashlight
and map, the other reluctantly
dressed as a tall, lanky Santa Claus.
It was Christmas Eve. They carried a
bag of mostly used toys that they had
collected from friends and strangers.
They knocked on doors until 2 a.m., taking
presents to 13 unsuspecting families
that otherwise would not have any
Christmas celebration.
From that night nearly 40 years ago
has grown one of the city’s most beloved
holiday traditions, which has since given
more than 2 million Christmas presents
to San Antonio’s neediest children. The
reluctant Santa had been cajoled into the
red suit by his friend Louise. That was the
start of the Elf Louise Christmas Project,
now preparing for its 39th Christmas.
Last year, through Elf Louise, more
than 4,500 volunteers collected donations
and toys, wrapped presents, and
put on Santa suits to deliver gifts to
21,000 children in 5,500 households.
Louise Locker Hall, now a San
Antonio psychotherapist with a husband
and a 21-year-old son, never imagined
that the project would grow to this magnitude.
Over the decades, it has snowballed
as more and more San Antonians
adopted her vision of simple, anonymous
giving as their own.
The Elf Louise Project aims to create
Christmas miracles. However, through the
decades, many miracles have transpired to
keep the project going. It’s one of the most
unusual nonprofit groups in the country.
For example, there have never been
any paid employees in the operation. The
massive project, which rivals Santa’s
North Pole workshop in its efficiency, is
completely run by volunteers. And every
November and December, the project
requires a 50,000-square-foot space to
serve as Elf Louise’s Workshop, where
volunteers organize and wrap nearly
50,000 presents for children.
From year to year, project leaders usually
don’t know where this space will
come from until the last minute, mainly
because the space must be donated. The
project keeps costs as low as possible, so
that 98 cents of every dollar goes toward
toys for children. With that budget,
there’s no room for rent money.
Yet somehow, year after year, the
space comes through.
The start of the project was also nothing
short of miraculous, growing from a spark of an idea that a 19-year-old college
student had while watching the
Tonight Show.
Locker was on break from Trinity
University during the 1969 Christmas
season. One evening she was watching
Johnny Carson on TV as he read children’s
letters to Santa. While the letters
he read were sweetly funny, Locker was
struck by inspiration. What if she could
find a letter to Santa written by a little
girl who would not receive any presents?
Locker could leave her old childhood
dolls on the girl’s doorstep for Christmas.
“It was completely on a whim, but
looking back on it, I really feel it came
from God. It was such a powerful urge in
me,” Locker says.
The next day, Locker headed to the
post office. She learned that letters
addressed to Santa were simply collected
and thrown away, but still postal workers
couldn’t let Locker open them. She persisted
with her request until the postmaster
at last allowed her to look
through the boxes of letters.
When she finally had the letters in
front of her, she wasn’t even sure what
she was looking for. Most letters were
adorable, many asked for long lists of
brand name items. She read through
hundreds of letters before finding what
she calls “the one”:
“Dear Santa, I know the only reason
why you’ve never given us anything
before is because we’ve never written.”
A little girl named Anna went on to ask
Santa for a few items for herself and her
siblings, plus a Christmas tree, since they
had never had one. “Please don’t get
lost,” the letter finished.
“My life just changed on the spot,”
Locker says. She had only planned on
finding a special girl to anonymously give
her old dolls to. But as she read Anna’s
letter, she thought, what if there’s more?
“I didn’t have $5 to spend. I never
intended to (help) more than one child,”
Locker says. “But when I read that first
letter, how could you not?”
Locker left the post office with 13
letters, representing 65 children.
Christmas was just three days away. She
enlisted her mother’s help. They started
by rummaging through their home,
looking for items that might make passable
gifts. A couple of friends helped
too. But it wasn’t enough.
Her next step involved the neighborhood
diner and the kindness of strangers.
Locker camped out with her Santa letters
at the counter in the old Earl Abel’s diner,
on the corner of Broadway and
Hildebrand. She began to talk to strangers
who sat down to eat, explaining how she
needed help. Between a few friends and
several Earl Abel’s customers, Locker
pulled together a collection of mostly used
gifts that closely matched the requests in
the Santa letters.
Locker originally thought that she and
a friend could drop presents on the
doorsteps, knock on the door and run,
but on Christmas Eve, she decided that
Santa needed to deliver the presents.
She asked Gibson’s Costumes if she
could borrow a Santa suit. They loaned it
to her at no charge.
Once the preparations were complete
and the toys loaded into a truck, the sky
was dark. As her friend Wes Hoover
drove, Locker navigated with a flashlight
and a map and talked the reserved student
into playing Santa.
As they reached their first stop,
Locker realized she hadn’t thought about
what it would be like to go to the
homes. Every door opened wide to let
them in, even when the household had
already gone to sleep. Every family woke
up, let them in and asked no questions,
even when they made their last stop
after 2 a.m. at Anna’s house.
A small, skinny woman opened the
door, looking up at the tall, thin Santa.
She was shaking. “I can’t believe you’re
here!” she said, over and over again.
Her children had written earlier in the
year and remained enthusiastic all through
the season, convinced that Santa would
be there; she had tried to warn them that
there was no such thing as Santa. Her five
children, including Anna, had spent the
evening looking out the window and listening
for Santa. They had given up at
midnight and gone to bed crying.
When Santa got there, all the children
got up. Santa reached into his bag and
gave them each a present, addressing
each one by name.
“It was shocking, magical, miraculous.
Amazing,” Locker says. “None of
these families had anything for
Christmas; they didn’t have anything.
“Honestly, I really didn’t know what I
had gotten myself into when I wanted to
give my dolls away, and when I read
Anna’s letter. I just could not believe that
little girl’s faith and that she could believe
when there was no reason to believe,” she
says. “That’s what faith is, you believe
when you can’t see it. I feel like that was
what got me to continue to do it.”
The following December, Locker went
back to the post office. She found 25
families to help. She headed back to the
counter at Earl Abel’s. Year after year, she
found more people who needed help.
She also found more people who wanted
to help.
“I’ve always believed in the innate
goodness in people and the potential
for good,” Locker says. “Sometimes
you have to just help people see it
inside themselves.”
Slowly, as more people got on board,
the operation moved from Locker’s
mother’s house to her own apartment,
then to loaned spaces at churches and
eventually to large warehouses.
The gifts have gone from a jumble of
collected used items to brand new toys
appropriate for the age and gender for
the children who will receive them. The
project used to receive calls directly from
people who wanted help. Today, needy
families apply for the Santa visits through
more than 150 agencies, including hospitals,
government agencies, schools and
other organizations. The neediest go to
the top of the list.
The project is governed by a volunteer
board of directors; donations small and
large flow in from individuals and area
businesses. Even Santa’s delivery routes
are computerized and efficient.
The organization has evolved over the
years, but some things remain the same.
Obstacles still exist, and they continue to
be overcome one way or another. Money
is always needed, as are volunteers and
toys. At the heart of it, the spirit is the
same as that first Christmas Eve.
“It’s all just so positive. Nobody’s getting
paid, so everything we do is just a
labor of love,” says Bill Harrison, director
of the project. “It’s a totally pure and
wholesome thing.”
These days, Locker considers her role
to be the “spirit keeper” of the Elf Louise
Christmas Project, preserving its original
essence and keeping its idealistic core
intact. “I’ve always thought, even when
I was real young, that if everybody just
did good in the world, if everybody did
their part in the world, the world could
be transformed,” says Locker.
“It’s so easy to get bummed out about
life and to get a little cynical and discouraged
about life and the way things seem
to be going in our society. But then you
can also choose to make something happen
right in the here and now,” she says. “It doesn’t have to be enormous. You can
just change things immediately.”
For more information on the Elf
Louise Christmas Project, or to donate
money, toys or time, call (210) 224-
1843, or go to www.elflouise.com.
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