Philadelphia sports fans have earned a reputation across the nation for their passion, their grit, and sometimes, their legendary toughness. Nobody knows that better than Frank Olivo, a young man who, in December 1968, stepped onto Franklin Field dressed as Santa Claus at an Eagles football game. What happened next became an infamous moment in sports history: Frank, as Santa, was booed heartily and pelted with snowballs by thousands of disgruntled fans. It’s a legendary tale of a true Philadelphia moment, one that still sparks conversation and even inspired an ESPN spoof.
Today, we’re honored to hear the real story behind “Snowball Santa” directly from Frank’s first cousin and best friend, Rich Monastra. Rich takes us back to their humble beginnings in post-war South Philadelphia, painting a vivid picture of two baby boomers from Italian immigrant families, growing up together as “like brothers.” He’ll share how Frank Olivo was more than just a guy in a suit; he was a social barber, a natural showman, and a beloved figure in their tight-knit community long before that fateful day. This is a story of friendship, family, and a unique moment woven into the vibrant tapestry of Our American Stories.
📖 Read the Episode Transcript
We were born in the post-war era, two of us baby boomers.
I was born in 1946.
Frank was born in 1948 in South Philadelphia. Born to typical Battalian immigrant families. Our parents hailed from Naples, Italy. For the most part, we were born and raised in South Philadelphia. Went to Catholic elementary schools, Catholic high school. I graduated 1964. Frank graduated 1966 from the same high school, Bishop Neumann. I went on to college. Frank decided that he wanted to be of barbor, so he went to barbering school. His father was a veteran of World War II. He had landed at Omaha Beach on D-Day. He was wounded, wound up with a plate in his head. His mother, Rose, worked her whole life in the tailor shops, which was pretty typical for South Philadelphia women. Frank went to by a barber school in Center City, Philadelphia, in the area now they call Chinatown, got his by barber’s license. Frank really, really liked that. He liked being a barber. He was very social. For the time he was a kid, he was very, very social. He got—he got along with, with, you know, with everybody. He had a talent. Early on, we started to start to seat in him of being a bit of a showman, too. He would do impersonations of actors, movie stars, whatever. Family really loved that. Kids in the neighborhood really loved when he would imitate our, our, our teachers.
Especially when we were in high school, and he—and he sort of liked all that attention.
He was sort of deprived of that attention as a, as a kid. You know, his family, his own personal family, mother and father. I guess you might call him today—we might say—is a dysfunctional family. You know, Rose and Bruno were always working. Frankie was on the street a lot at the time. Fortunately, he would come over to our house, and, you know, my mother kind of took him in, and he was.
Like our, like our brother.
That part of South Philadelphia sometimes, you know, has a bad rep. A little bit of the so-called mob guys hung out there. There’s a place called…
Pooch’s and Nick’s Roast Beef Shop.
I think both of those places were kind of fronts for the organized, the mob guys. But somehow Frank got friendly with those people as well. Every once in a while they would ask us to carry the little brown bags to go from point A to point B. Little did we know we were carrying number plays or horse beats. And Frank spoke up about it one time. He said, “What’s, what’s, what’s in these bags you’re asking us to carry?” So one of the guys at this place called Pooch’s showed him, and Frankie started to laugh, and so, and the other—the, you know—the quasi mob guy started to laugh too, and he said, “I like you kids. You guys are really cool. You got a real chutzpah here, so to speak.” And he gave us the half a buck apiece. But as time—time went on, you know, I went on to college, and we were always fans of the filled up his sports scene. We used to go up the old Shibe Park to watch the Phillies play. The cops there who guarded the stadium were very friendly. They let you hang outside the stadium, and once the first inning was over, they opened up the gates, and we all got in for free. Well, all the kids hanging outside the stadium got in for free. We up in the bleachers and watched the ball game. Once we were a bit older, I guess in our teens, our uncles—they had eight season tickets—four in one row and four seats right behind the first four. And as we grew up, they would take us to the Eagles games as a sort of a rite of passage, and that ultimately led up to the infamous snowball event. In December of 1968, the Eagles were scheduled to play the Minnesota Vikings, which was a fairly new team at that time. I think they had come into the league about 1961 or ’62. They weren’t very good, but the Eagles were worse. The Eagles were having a very, very bad year. They were something like two in ten or two and eleven. The schedule was much shorter than they played. I think the NFL played a 12- or 14-game schedule.
Then.
Anyway, this game—all the sportswriters had picked up on it. They were calling it the O.J. Bowl, and in reference to O.J. Simpson, if the Eagles lost this game, they would get the number one draft choice in the NFL draft. And of course, everybody was touting O.J. Simpson at that moment. He was probably the best player in the country, playing for the University of Southern California. The Eagles were in a down, really a down period. Their coach, Joe Kuharich, former coach at Notre Dame, had signed a 15-year contract. Can you imagine back in those days? And I think Joe Kuharich was a great example of the Peter Principle. You know, you rise one level above your competence. He was great as a college coach, but he was lousy as a pro coach. People would boo him routinely every game, win or lose.
On this day, there was an…
An airplane circling over Franklin Field, trailing a banner saying, “Joe must go!” And every time the plane went over, fans would, you know, would, would, would, would cheer. The fans were in a sour mood that day. Trust me, it had snowed the day before—Saturday—nothing much, but the game started late because they had to clear the field. The game starts, the game goes on, and the Eagles are winning, and the fans are booing. So you can imagine, because everybody wanted them to lose so that they could draft Simpson. Anyway, historically, the Eagles at the last home game used to have Santa Claus, you know, come out on a sleigh, and he would, you know, throw these miniature footballs ended the stands, and one of which was a, was a gold-colored one, and if you caught the gold one, you got a season ticket for the next year’s games. Well, that year, December of ’68, for whatever reason, they decided not to throw out the footballs.
So people were booing that.
Somewhere in the second quarter, this man from the Eagles—he’s looking throughout the stands—and he spots Frankie with a Santa Claus suit. Now, the obvious question is: why is Frankie wearing a Santa Claus suit through the Eagles game? Well, our grandmother each Christmas would host a Christmas party for all the grandchildren, and she would give them their gifts. There he was getting up in years, and rather than going visit each one of our households, even though we were fairly close, it was a bit of a chore for her.
So it was a big party.
All the relatives, all the cousins and uncles—had to be 60, 70 people in the house. Well, one of my uncles usually played Santa Claus—Charlie Simkiss—had been doing it, but Charlie had lost a lot.
Of weight and fill out the suit.
So he drafted Frankie Olivo to do the Santa. So he gave him the Santa suit, and Frankie decided on a whim to wear the Santa suit at the Eagles game because we were going to go right from the Eagles game back to my grandmother’s house for the Christmas party.
And you’re listening to Rich Monastra, and he’s the first cousin of Frank Olivo. And, Frank, well, you’re going to hear more about this remarkable episode in Philadelphia sports history and American sports history, for that matter, when we come back. More of the story. This is Our American Stories. You’ve been listening to Rich Monastra tell the story of Frank Olivo, the Snowball Santa. Let’s continue with the story.
So we’re in the stands; Frankie’s got the Santa suit on. The place is in a sour mood. The Eagles are winning. Planes are flying over saying, “Joe must go!” I mean, it was really nasty. Anyway, this guy from the Eagles staff spots Frankie, goes up into the stands, and asks him if he’d be interested in subbing for the man they had hired to play Santa Claus. Apparently, the guy they had hired—the Eagles had hired—was stranded up in North Jersey somewhere and couldn’t get down there to Philadelphia because of the snow. Okay, the PR guy for the Eagles told them what to do, where to be, and so forth, and they took.
Him into the, one of the, you know…
The bowels of the stadium. There, halftime came. The PA announcer gets on the PA and says, “Santa Claus is coming to town!” “Would everybody welcome Santa Claus?” “What a big Philadelphia welcome!” Well, uh, that’s when the fun began. Frankie enters the field. He’s walking around carrying a big Santa bag, and he’s got some of the Eagles cheerleaders—are dressed up his elves—and they’re walking around the, you know, the base of the stadium, and all the booing started. People started booing Santa Claus. And then the snowballs came. People are picking up, and they’re making snowballs and throwing them at Santa Claus. And the elves, well, a couple of the elves ran for cover, and here’s Frankie—became the target of all of this. Not only did they start throwing snowballs, but they started throwing anything they can get their hands on. People are throwing beer cans, beer bottles, sandwiches, anything they get their hands on.
They were heaving at Santa Claus.
They’re taking out their vengeance about the Eagles’ poor season and winning this game, thereby losing the O.J. Bowl. They were taking their frustrations out on poor Santa Claus. So Frankie and what was left of the elves crew made a circle around the field, and then they went back in. Frankie worked his way back to our seats. Of course, when we all got back to the Christmas party, we all were telling, you know, the others who were at the party what had happened. You know, Frank had gotten hit with snowballs and beer cans and stale sandwiches and hoagies and got nose waddle, and people were half laughing, and, you know…
Half shocked by it all.
It wasn’t until that night somebody had had the television on in one of the other rooms at my grandmother’s house, and they noticed that Frankie was on TV. So we all ran over to the TV set, you know, and you saw him coming out of the tunnel of the stadium. They were playing some music on the PA system, and people started throwing snowballs, and you heard them booing and all that. So, of course, Philadelphia fans have had this reputation for eons about being rowdy fans, and, you know, all that stuff. We’re the only city that had a, a judge on site and a sort of a jail in the, in the bowels of the stadium for people who got too rowdy. So, I mean, it was really crazy. Philadelphia is a great sports town, don’t get me wrong, but people can get really crazy sometimes. So the story made national news and at least one aspect of international news: The London Times picked up on it. He told us he did not expect, you know, that, that booing. He said, “Booing bothered him more than anything. He said, ‘You know, he couldn’t understand people throwing snow and all that,'” but he said.
“The booing!” He said, “Who the hell boos Santa Claus?”
And of course, that’s the line that got tagged at Philadelphia. From that point on, “This is the city that boos Santa Claus.” And everyone’s in a blue moon, you hear some sportscaster on some station, local or national, throw that line out there. You know, when something happens negatively in the city of Philadelphia, they’ll say, “Well, you got to remember this city did boo Santa Claus.”
You know.
Of course, when he went back to work at the barbershop. He was working in the, in a barbershop in the Suburban station, which is the main train station in Center City Philadelphia, and people would come in there. They would spot him there. Of course, his picture was cut out of the newspapers. It was the people hanging up in their windows of the barbershop. He got a lot of customers from local celebrities, business people, television stars. He had one of his customers with the Archbishop of Philadelphia. At the time was a man by the name of John Krol. He’s now deceased, but he was asking Frankie for his autograph. Imagine this: the Cardinal of Philadelphia asking Frankie for his autograph! So he had all the, all the local, you know, politicians would stop in there. Mayor Tate, James, James Tate was the mayor of Philadelphia, had his picture taken down in Frank’s boy at barbershop, so he became a local celebrity. Frank never got any pay from the Eagles. They gave him a pair of cufflinks. If you can believe that. Frank was not much of a cuff-shirt kind of guy.
In fact, one…
Of my uncles, Tony—he was a bit of a loudmouth, to say the least—wrote to the Eagles, and he called a bunch of cheap at s obs. So anyway, Frank got his own shop; it didn’t fare well. It was a bad time. By this time, it was the early ’80s; had to close.
The shop down. He went.
He went to work at one of the casinos that had just opened up in Atlantic City.
As a dealer.
He got his license as a dealer, and he ultimately worked his way up to become a pit boss. He got the rob elbows with some of the acts that were appearing there. One of his favorite buddies was Don Rickles. Frankie had—he was on a first-name basis—with, with, with Don, with Don Rickles, you know, they exchanged cards at Christmas time. I think when Frankie’s daughter got married, or maybe was his son. I forget which Don Rickles sun of a gift. Throughout his life, however, Frank was plagued by heart issues. Even as a kid. We would have, you know, sometimes he’d have to stop playing ball for a bit, or whatever we were doing. That became too much of an exertion for him. Frank died on the 30th of April 2015. He was—let’s see—he was about 65 or 66 at the time. I did the formal theology at Frank’s funeral, and while I was preparing to do that, I was getting phone calls. When I tell you—literally from all over the country. The story didn’t die. It just wouldn’t leave him. Even to this day. The fact that you contacted me evidences the fact that people are still talking about it. The day of his funeral, the priest asked me what music they should have for Frankie, and half-jokingly, I said, “Play ‘Here Comes Santa Claus.'” The priest looked at me rather puzzled. I said, “I’m just kidding, Padre,” but I thought that would have, would have been appropriate because I think he would have loved that. So the legend lives on. He’s the gift that keeps on giving.
Here comes Santa Claus. Here comes Santa Claus. Right down Santa Claus Lane.
And you’ve been listening to Frankie Olivo’s first cousin, Rich Monastra tell the story of the Snowball Santa. But all of the story—the neighborhood, the context, the neighborhood stores, and the psychological profile of a Philadelphia Eagles fan—at least a whole bunch. And I was a New York Giants fan growing up in Northern New Jersey. And I will never forget my first away game at Philadelphia, and I had the temerity to wear a New York Giants hat that lasted about a second. The story of Frankie Olivo, the story of the Snowball Santa, here on Our American Stories.
And he doesn’t care for Richarpoor. He loves you just the same, Santa Clausmo.
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