By Ted Gup
On December 22, 1933, something wonderful and unexplained happened to Felice May. It was the night before her 4th birthday and two days before Christmas, but in the past neither day had been any different than the other chore-filled days of her Depression-era childhood.
But on that night, Felice's parents did something they had never done before. In their rickety Model T with its torn canvas roof, they drove into town, showed Felice the dazzling Christmas lights, and led her to the five-and-dime store, where they offered her a choice of a doll or a small wooden pony on a pull string. She chose the pony. It was her only store-bought toy.
It was a night Felice would never forget. But it was also a night that left her with a mystery that lasted through the years: how could her parents have afforded such a gift when they were so down on their luck? Felice's parents had no money. It was still in the depths of the Depression.
Even today, at 81, she remembers the pleasure that wooden pony gave her and how she pulled it around the hardscrabble farm she grew up on outside Canton, Ohio. That wooden horse brought untold joy into an otherwise bleak and threadbare childhood.
Today Felice May raises miniature ponies. But how, she's always wondered, could her parents have afforded such a gift when they, like millions of other Americans, were so down on their luck.
It was I as an investigative reporter who provided, or rather stumbled, across the answer. In June 2008, my 80-year-old mother, Virginia, handed me a battered old black suitcase that had belonged to her mother and it took me a little time to figure out what I was looking at.
Here is what I pieced together from the contents of the suitcase. On December 18, 1933, a Canton resident who called himself "B. Virdot" took out a tiny ad in the local newspaper offering to help his fellow townspeople in a modest way so that they and their children might know the joy of Christmas.
He asked them to write to him and tell them what they were going through, and he pledged that just as no one would ever learn his true name, he would never reveal the names of those who wrote to him.
He was deluged with letters, all of them dated December 18, 1933. A few days later, the mysterious B. Virdot mailed out a flurry of 150 five dollar bills to families across the town. Back then, five dollars was more like 80 dollars.
I came to realize that the name, "B. Virdot," was a combination of his three names - Barbara my sister, Virginia my mother, and Dotsy my sister. Among the letters in the suitcase was one from Felice May's mother, Edith.
"If I only had five dollars, I would think I am in heaven. I would buy a pair of shoes for my oldest boy in school. His toes are all out & no way to give him a pair. He was six in October. Then I have a little girl who will be four two days before Xmas + a boy of 18 months. I could give them all something for Xmas + I would be very happy... Please do help me! My husband don't know I am writing & I haven't even a stamp, but I am going to beg the mailman to post this for me." And the postman did just that.
The girl about to turn four was Felice and a portion of the money provided by B. Virdot bought that wooden pony. When I shared the letter with Felice, she was barely able to speak. And who was this mysterious Santa named "B. Virdot?" He was my grandfather. His true name: Sam Stone.
For the past two years I have been using Ancestry.com plus a handful of genealogy tricks and tools to track down the descendants of the letter-writers. I wanted to learn what had become of them, wondering how they survived the Depression and what affect - if any - the small gift might have had on them.
I also dug into my own grandfather's past in search of an answer about why he had made the gifts. Both of these quests yielded some stunning surprises - so many that I was able to compile them into a book, A Secret Gift.
Felice May's story is but one of scores that pay tribute to the character of those who endured the hard times. It is also a testament to the power of small gestures and the need for all of us to stay connected, particularly in times of hardship.
~ The Author is Ted Gup and this is from his book "A Secret Gift" which is "How One Man's Kindness--and a Trove of Letters--Revealed the Hidden History of the Great Depression."
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