United effort brings kids to North Pole

One day Leslie Lathrop realized she was a flea trapped in the circle of life. She was working at Spokane International Airport as a ticket agent for United Airlines, a company that shuttled itself into Chapter 11 after Sept. 11.

Downsizing, imperiled pensions, shaky morale, an unknown future – these realities took off and landed around Leslie each day. She had control over none of them.

But Leslie, who loved her job, had control over this: She could ask people for stuff. So she did.

When wealthy Spokane folks checked in for flights, she hit them up for backpacks and sweat shirts and stocking caps. She hit them up for money. She knew her customers well. She worked for United for 26 years.

And these folks said: Sure, Leslie, we’ll give. They knew Leslie and dozens of other United employees needed to create the North Pole in an airplane hangar for an annual happening called Fantasy Flight. A week from today, 60 of our community’s poorest kids will visit that North Pole.

Leslie, though she retired from United in February, has not retired from Fantasy Flight. She and fellow employee Melanie Luebeck organized the first Fantasy Flight eight years ago, after attending a planning session in Chicago with other United employees who put on the event in other airports.

It seemed overwhelming, but on the flight home, Melanie said, “Les, we can do it.” They brainstormed with other United employees about how the North Pole should look. They asked each other: “You are a little kid again. What do you need to see to make it real?”

Fantasy Flight grows grander each year. Next Saturday, as is her tradition, Leslie will be Mrs. Claus.

She is ready for her favorite moment. The moment will arrive after the children, chosen by agencies in Spokane and Coeur d’Alene, have been picked up by buses at the downtown Spokane YWCA, given their North Pole sweat pants, sweat shirts and fleece jackets, received their North Pole passports, checked through airport security and taxied for 20 minutes in a plane down a runway. The children will have stowed in their overhead compartments – with the help of personal elves, one elf for each child – backpacks filled with new gloves, hats and socks.

The suspicious among them, the children often disappointed by promising adults who don’t deliver on promises, will allow themselves to hope that maybe this good stuff is happening to them for real.

They will then exit the plane and walk into the North Pole, a place filled with trees, food and more elves. They will scream as Santa and Mrs. Claus walk in. They will mob the Clauses, as if they are movie stars on a red carpet. The toughest of the children will have softened by now. This is for real.

And they will sit on Santa’s lap and receive the gifts they asked for in advance – SpongeBobs, Yu-Gi-Oh cards, Bratz dolls.

Mr. and Mrs. Claus will tell the children: “We can see the future. You will be special.”

The children will listen as Mrs. Claus reads “The Polar Express.” They will read along with her in their personal copies of the Christmas classic.

The night will end too soon. The children will walk out of the North Pole to waiting limousines that will whisk them back to the YWCA, back to a different, daily reality.

The children will leave behind Mrs. Claus and the 125 community members who donned elf outfits and the hundreds more who donated time and money to Fantasy Flight.

These are adults who could rail against the times we live in now. Times of war and anger and fear and hopelessness. Lots of things are bankrupt now, not just the airlines.

Leslie and these Fantasy Flight adults could go the route of railing and despair, but they have chosen a different way. They have focused on these children. They have built the North Pole in an airplane hangar.

They have shown the rest of us fleas what fleas trapped together in the circle of life are capable of, if they forget their own woes, if they organize for a good much greater than themselves.