“We started out with, I think, maybe 300 children showed up that first year and now there is over 2,000 children over the entire weekend and we treat them all with love and respect and that is what it is all about,” says Elaine Poppe, 2022 Jefferson Award Winner.
All the smiles on the faces of the people attending the Children’s Hometown Holiday can be attributed to the vision of Elaine Poppe. She has spent over 15 years, ensuring the kids and their families have a wonderful Christmas memory in Wapakoneta. From getting a gift from Santa, to taking a spin on the ice-skating rink, enjoying a horse-drawn carriage ride through downtown, or one of the dozens of activities over the three-day event, and all of it is free.
“I was formally a schoolteacher for 25 years and it seems to me that children were left out,” says Poppe. “There were a lot of things that happen for adults at Christmas time, not so much for children. So this whole thing came about because of that. A desire to do something special for children that they would remember in the future that was in their hometown.”
Poppe would be quick to point out that there are over 400 people that help put on the Children’s Hometown Holiday, but those other volunteers and businesses in the community will tell you that it is Poppe’s passion that drives them to help.
“What she does with the Children’s Hometown Holiday here in Wapak is pretty phenomenal,” says Carrie Manbeck who nominated Poppe for the Jefferson Award. “She does costumes for any events. She is very active with the Halloween Parades, anything that the school needs, the fact that she had an essay program with it last year was phenomenal. She is very passionate and somebody like that deserves this.”
“I don’t have to ask or shake the bushes to get people to come to do this,” states Poppe. “They really want to do it and they do it. I am hoping at some point that people will come along and say, hey this is a good thing, and it becomes a template for other communities. That maybe they can look at their own resources, like we have looked at ours, and come up with a plan to celebrate children in their own communities.”
Poppe and the other Jefferson Award Winners will be recognized at a banquet on April 19th. One of the winners will be selected to represent this area at the national Jefferson Awards in Indianapolis this Summer.
