In our minds, she is forever the little girl who asked a simple question β and received the timeless answer: "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus."
But for her descendants, Virginia O'Hanlon is more than a storybook figure who more than a century ago wrote to a New York newspaper, asking, "Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?"
"Gram was a lady. Very elegant. She would dress up to go to the post office across the street," says Virginia Rogers, 63, O'Hanlon's granddaughter.
Rogers also remembers visiting her grandmother β an elementary schoolteacher and later principal β at her apartment in New York City.
"Growing up, we all got a trip to New York City. We would go one at a time on the train and my grandmother would be there to get us. We went to Radio City Music Hall and saw the Christmas show. We had such a great time."
This Christmas, as she has done all of her life, Rogers will share with family members the tale of how her grandmother, then 8, wrote to The New York Sun after asking her father, Dr. Philip O'Hanlon, about Santa.
Little Virginia's father, a well-known police surgeon and coroner, deferred to the newspaper β and its famous motto: "If you see it in the Sun, it's so."
And so the child wrote her letter, which was masterfully answered in an editorial in the fall of 1897.
Written by Francis P. Church, the editorial assured Virginia that Santa "exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist."
The editorial became an immediate hit, reprinted every year in the paper.
It also catapulted O'Hanlon into the limelight. Throughout her life, she received mail about her Santa Claus letter.
"My grandmother would always come visit us at Christmastime and people would read about it," says Virginia Rogers' sister, Mary Blair, 65, now living in Idaho. "The post office was across the street. At Christmastime, there would be literally box-loads of mail addressed to my grandmother."
Always trying to divert the attention away from her and onto the message of the editorial, Virginia O'Hanlon did give interviews from time to time, read the famed editorial for several years over the radio and appeared on a number of TV shows, including "The Perry Como Show," say Rogers and Blair.
"She read the letter and then Chet Huntley, the anchorman for NBC, read the editorial," says Blair.
Briefly married, Virginia O'Hanlon Douglas had one child, Laura, but seven grandchildren.
"She spent her summers with us at North Chatham in New York," says Rogers, who now lives in Tucson with her daughter, Sara Little, son-in-law Doug Little and grandchildren, Madison, 8, and Jake, 7.
Educated at Hunter College, Columbia University and Fordham University, Virginia O'Hanlon Douglas spent a lifetime teaching underprivileged children and later supervising chronically ill children in New York City, many of them hospitalized, says Blair. "She was a woman ahead of her time."
O'Hanlon Douglas worked until the age of 70. She died in 1971 at the age of 81.
Today, her letter resides in a safe-deposit box in New York, where Rogers' son, Brock Rogers, now lives.
"The letter is glued into a scrapbook. It's a very small, old-looking piece of paper," says Brock Rogers.
While living in Phoenix about 10 years ago, he took the scrapbook to the televised "Antiques Roadshow."
"The woman I showed it to immediately took it to the producers," he says. Also in the scrapbook was a note from an assistant editor at the Sun who had returned the letter to little Virginia, thus authenticating the letter.
"They thought it was a nice piece of Americana," says Brock Rogers, who was told the letter was worth between $20,000 and $30,000.
Then again, it might be priceless.
This year, Madison is the same age as her great-great grandmother was when she penned that famous letter.
"Some of my friends don't believe in Santa," says Madison, a third-grader at Fruchthendler Elementary School. "But I think he's real."
And for those who don't believe? "I tell them to read the story."
The life behind the letter
• Virginia O'Hanlon's granddaughter and great-granddaughter discuss her letter to the New York Sun and how she felt about her fame, and read from the famous story in video at www.azstarnet.com/accent.
• Turn to the Star's Editorial Page Monday to read the full text of Virginia O'Hanlon's letter. Go to www.azstarnet.com/opinion Monday to hear Star editorial writer Sam Negri read the entire letter.
