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Teen 'elf' Martha Kahler:
Solid as
Marple
By KIRBY NEUMANN-REA
News editor
This may be the first you’ve heard of
“The Smudgepot Daughters,” and their leader, Elf Marple.
That’s Martha Kahler’s name — at least for
part of the year.
It was in December when the Odell
13-year-old, and friends, took up paper and pencils in the service
of Santa Claus.
It’s a story we didn’t quite get around to
telling during the Christmas season, but the story of Marple — er,
Martha — did not end when the reindeer and jingle bells
retired for the year.
Martha is an seventh-grader at Wy’east
Middle School and the daughter of and Richard and Kathy Kahler.
The Kahlers are orchardists, as are other of Martha’s friends’
parents, hence the name “Smudgepot Daughters,” for the cylindrical
heating devices used to warm pear trees (typically in late
winter/early spring).
Martha’s moniker came about when one of
her friends expanded an early childhood nickname, Marp, into “Marple.”
And, yes, Martha is well-aware of the famed Agatha Christie
detective, Miss Jane Marple.
As Elf Marple, Martha wrote more than 20
letters from Santa this past year, $5 per letter, as a fundraiser
for her planned trip this summer with the three-week People to
People program to Belgium, France and the Netherlands.
“We get to stay in people’s homes. I’m
really looking forward to that,” Martha said. Fellow elves Cory,
Avery, Breezy and Tanner assisted her in the effort. To get the
word out, Martha made posters and placed them at stores and
restaurants in the valley.
The elves wrote to children as well as
seniors, in a lightly decorative script that looks like it came
from a busy, yet cheerful, North Pole assistant.
In the letters, such as the one reprinted
at right, the Elves sent well wishes and encouragement, and a bit
of Santaland news:
“It seems so much colder in the North Pole
this year. So Mrs. Claus made me some new mittens and hat. They
are fuzzy and warm. She also made the reindeer socks for their
hooves. Ho! Ho! Ho! They look very handsome in them.”
But Martha and elves are already thinking
of warmer seasons. This month or in February they will serve a
pancake breakfast, as the Smudgepot Daughters.
At Valentine’s Day, they will sponsor a
“Heart Attack” fundraiser, which involves large numbers of
decorative hearts hung in recipients’ yards.
All this and more projects to follow,
probably under the guise of “Traveling Gnomes,” details to
be worked out.
Elves and gnomes might be small, but
Martha/Marple is a 13-year-old who thinks big.
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