Willoughby: A Halloween tradition that molded children

Sixth grade teacher Mona Frost started one of Aspen’s favorite and meaningful Halloween traditions in 1948.  She, using her students, recruited children from grades one through six to enlist in the project, soliciting pennies, nickels and dimes for worthy causes from donors when they made their Halloween trick or treat rounds.

The primary recipient was CARE, but Frost had students pick other charities and they selected Hellen Keller’s organization, American Foundation for the Overseas Blind, and the Pitkin County Hospital. In later years UNICEF was added.

In the years I remember participating, we used sealed empty and cleaned milk cartons and asked donors to chip in depositing coins into the container. Later they came up with ‘black and orange boxes’. Beginning weeks before Halloween, the Aspen Times reminded readers that we would be asking for coins, and where the funds would go.

CARE, first called Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe, focused on families in post-war European countries. It was later changed to Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere. The mainstay aid consisted of CARE packages that contained food for families for two weeks. Aspen funds raised in 1957 funded 40 CARE packages. CARE grew to serving 104 countries and 92 million people by 2019.

We would not think much about the total money raised each year in Aspen these days, but the point was not the amount raised, it was that it was children volunteering to raise it. We raised $56 in 1955 ($500 in today’s dollars). Aspen students received letters back from Greece, Turkey, Israel, France, Spain and Germany thanking them.

The amount raised nearly tripled in 1956. It went up and down, but well into the 1960s the amount continued at the $150/year level. That’s a lot of coins.

Children were encouraged by the letters they got back, but in 1959 they received a special letter from a CARE representative in Denver who wrote thanking them for inspiring other cities, in this case Denver, to participate.

Children then, were generally divided into two groups, those who lived on the west half of town and those on the east. They made the rounds in their familiar neighborhood usually knowing whose house they were visiting.  My sister and I lived downtown and most of our closest friends lived on the west side, so we joined them.

There was no daylight savings time so we went out in the dark or near dark early in the evening. Good years and not so good years were labeled not on how many coins we collected, or the weight of our trick or treat bags filled with candy, but based on the weather. Fall in Aspen after the sun goes down is not very warm, limiting what kind of costume you might wear, or if you had to add a coat over the top of it. Early seasonal snowstorms or rain separated the good years verses the bad years.

My childhood Halloweens included soliciting for CARE, but like most children the treats, and certainly not the tricks, were the focus, but it was an important introduction to the value of, and the personal satisfaction of, giving to others.  

Tim Willoughby’s family story parallels Aspen’s. He began sharing folklore while teaching at Aspen Country Day School and Colorado Mountain College. Now a tourist in his native town, he views it with historical perspective. Reach him at redmtn2@comcast.net.