Six decades ago, on a fall afternoon, a young woman caught sight of a children's parade. She followed the children, in bright native dress, as they wended their way through the streets of the town. They entered a store, with the woman behind them, and inside the store she encountered a cow. She followed the cow, and she came to a booth.
On account of the children, the cow and the booth, the woman came up with a world-changing plan.
The booth was in Wanamaker's department store in Philadelphia, and it belonged to UNICEF. The parade of costumed children (and the cow) was part of a campaign to send powdered milk to needy children overseas.
The woman was a schoolteacher named Mary Emma Allison. Moved by her chance encounter, she and her husband created Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF, a Halloween ritual that celebrates its 60th anniversary today and has raised tens of millions of dollars for children worldwide.
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Allison died on Wednesday, at 93. The death, at her home in Lowell, Ind., was announced by UNICEF.
At the time of her fateful trip to Wanamaker's, Allison was the mother of three young children and the wife of a Presbyterian minister, Clyde Allison.
The Allisons had long been concerned with social responsibility. In 1947, they began collecting clothes for children in postwar Europe. As that program drew to a close, they decided to come up with a plan, centered on Halloween, by which American children might help less fortunate ones abroad.
Allison wrote an appeal for a national magazine. Published before Halloween in 1950, the appeal asked prospective trick-or-treaters to collect coins for UNICEF in milk cartons or tins.
