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The winter character came to be from a song written by West Virginian Jack Rollins, who is buried in the town of Keyser.
Photo Above: Modern-day Frosty (Mike Ryan) hangs out with Santa Claus in Keyser, West Virginia.
Photos Courtesy Mike Ryan.
Mike Ryan stands next to Santa Claus in his Frosty the Snowman suit at the Christmas parade in Keyser, West Virginia.
“You notice Santa Claus, but you don’t see Frosty the Snowman,” says Ryan, a Keyser city councilman. “The body is like a jumpsuit, but it’s so white, it looks like snow. The head is cardboard, but the carving looks like snow.”
Why this former Keyser mayor morphs into Frosty the Snowman makes sense. This town is where a young Jack Rollins (1906-1973) spent his childhood years—and ultimately grew up to create the classic character of Frosty the Snowman in song, show and snow.
Named after a railroad official in 1874, Keyser claims both the place where Rollins graduated high school and the final resting place of Rollins, who emulated his mother’s love for writing poetry, according to Keyser historian Dinah Courrier. “And she said maybe you should put some of your poetry into music.”
Widely popularized by cowboy crooner Gene Autry in 1950, “Frosty the Snowman” has endured as a national cold-weather classic. With its roots in this Potomac Highlands town in Mineral County, West Virginia.
“Keyser has adopted Frosty,” says Courrier. “It brings back a nostalgic feeling of the way things used to be.”
The songwriter is buried at Queens Meadow Point Cemetery, where Ryan serves as treasurer and president. A little snowman statue stands atop his gravestone. Mysteriously, too, someone builds a snowman on Rollins’ grave with the first snow of the season. But no one knows who, according to both Ryan and Courrier.
Yearly, too, as November becomes December, Frosty Fest dances onto the campus of West Virginia University’s Potomac State College at Keyser.
“Our event is kind of the kickoff to the Christmas season,” says Kara Hotchkiss, the college’s interim director of resident life.
Frosty Fest features frosty-themed craft stations plus a “Frosty the Snowman” sing-along. “We obviously try to tie in some historical information to pay tribute to Mr. Rollins,” Hotchkiss says.
Ryan dances around Frosty Fest, too—and also takes field trips with his wife, Jean, who plays Crystal, Frosty’s girlfriend. She guides him since he can’t see well with “eyes made out of coal.” These frosty folks share snowy stories of shows featuring Frosty—and the connections to Keyser. “It’s a learning adventure,” Ryan says.
TJ Coleman, another Keyser resident, recently helped note Rollins’ other children’s song characters, “Peter Cottontail” and “Smokey the Bear,” on a Keyser welcome sign along US 220. There, relatives gathered at the 2022 unveiling, remembering Rollins as a “jolly, happy soul” – just like Frosty.
The songwriter lived in California. “Rollins finally became a partner of Steve Nelson, and they collaborated on a number of songs,” Courrier says.
But, back on Keyser’s Main Street, there’s “magic” among the mom-and-pop businesses, according to Hotchkiss —just like the song’s village square, where Frosty goes down with a broomstick in his hand, saying, “Catch me if you can!”
“When Jack Rollins was growing up,” says Courrier, “there were two blocks of what was the downtown. There were shops of all kinds on both sides of the street. It wasn’t a village square, but that’s where all the activity would have occurred.”
Back at the parade, Ryan walks a mile through town and hands out snowman figurines—what he calls “Official Frosty the Snowman souvenirs.”
“As soon as you get on Main Street, kids are running out,” Ryan says. “And they say, ‘Look! It’s Frosty. It’s Frosty.’”
The story above first appeared in our January / February 2024 issue.
