Privy for Santa forces chairman out in cold

Last Updated 9/1/00

From the Rockford Morning Star, Wednesday, December 4, 1974:

Privy for Santa forces chairman out in cold
by Ray Barth

DURAND - If you dress up a man and call him Santa Claus, can you decorate an outhouse and call it Santa's?
    David "Red" Welsh did it and Tuesday he was fired as Christmas decoration chairman of the Durand Businessman's Association.
    Defending what he did, Welsh, 33, said he didn't want the job anyway and got it only because local businessmen traditionally punish the member who doesn't attend meetings by making him chairman of something.
    There is also a tradition in Durand, Mayor Raymond Meissen said, of putting a ramshackle outhouse in the downtown park at Halloween.
    This year, however, it got out of hand and 15 outhouses were hauled in by pranksters, and hauled out again by the village to be burned, Meissen said.
    Apparently that memory still ranked when Welsh put up the Christmas decorations with a centerpiece building which is not ramshackle but is a solid, working outhouse.
    Welsh painted it red, trimmed it with lights and put a giant Santa with loaded sleigh and reinder going over the top.
    His wife said he got the idea from a comic Christmas card which depicts exactly the same scene.
    Frank Ryan, president of the businessmen, agreed there is such a Christmas card but he said there was nothing funny in the phone calls that began at 10:30 Sunday night and kept coming.
    It was Ryan who fired Welsh Tuesday following a Monday night meeting of businessmen who decided the outhouse had to go.
    Banker William Smith called it "rude and unbecoming to the village and not in tune with Christmas at all."
    An unnamed minister told Ryan, "Christ was born in a manger and not in an outhouse."
    Welsh, a cement contractor, said he replied, "If you want to talk religion, what's Santa got to do with Christmas?"
    Whether Santa's house is in or out may be decided at another businessmen's meeting Saturday night. Not a lot of decision-making may get done, however, because it is also the association's Christmas party, Smith pointed out.
    Welsh, who sees the hand of the grinch at work, said, "We'll see who has a sense of humor in this town and who hasn't."
    Welsh and his Santa house are not without their defenders, one being none other than Mrs. Santa herself.
    "I think it's allright," she asserted over a tub of Santa's wash. "Anything for fun. My husband's going to be Santa Claus, and he loves it."
    This could not be confirmed with the old gent himself, who was at work as a gas company maintenance man but there was no reason to doubt Mrs. Santa, who identified herself as Rowena Moore, mother of 15 children and grandmother to 35.
    A missing ingredient in the dispute was the children. Smith, a Cub Scout leader, acknowledged that his troops were not as offended as he is.
    As Meissen got to thinking about it, he said few kids under the age of 35 know what a country outhouse is.
    And Sharon Moore, who identified herself as Santa's daughter-in-law and mother of seven, said, "The little ones enjoy it. To them it's Santa's house."

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