When Robert Stone puts on the red suit, the entire atmosphere of the room he’s in changes.
The Drury University biology professor began working during the holiday season as Santa Claus at St. John’s Hospital in 1997 following heart bypass surgery there the previous year.
“I was so thankful for that institution (for) bringing me back to life from near death that I volunteered in the auxiliary,” Stone says.
His season as jolly old St. Nick starts in November at All Pet Supplies posing for pictures with pets and their owners and extends to the week before Christmas.
“It’s like something that overwhelms your psyche,” Stone says of playing Santa. “Once you do it and you see all the joy it brings to not only children but adults too, it kind of gets contagious.”
Stone joined Santa Claus fraternal organizations such as the Amalgamated Order of Real Bearded Santas, the Fraternal Order of Real Bearded Santas and Santa America. According to
www.santa-america.org, Stone is one of only two Missouri members of Santa America, a 100-member nationwide organization that schedules free Santa visits to children in need.
Of its 476 members internationally, the Fraternal Order of Real Bearded Santas has seven members in Missouri and one in Arkansas, according to Ron Robertson, president of the organization.
Fellow Fraternal Order member Richard Grim, of Branson, portrays Santa at Clay Cooper Theater and has been playing the role since 1964.
“Through the years, I got grayer and grayer, now I’m a real-bearded Santa,” Grim says. “I’ve been real-bearded for 10 years.”
“I enjoy the most working with special-needs kids,” Grim says. “I like volunteer work. It’s more satisfying.”
Stone does get paid for some of his events while others, such as annual visits to St. John’s and to the Missouri Hotel are volunteer efforts.
But he says he’s in the red in more ways than one – any pay he receives goes to buy stuffed animals for his bag, which he’s known to haul into restaurants and draw a crowd of boys and girls.
Stone’s Santa suits have gotten a little more extravagant as well. He buys costumes that cost $800 to $1,200 from Adele’s of Hollywood.
Stone will get paid about $40 per hour for some Santa appearances, while others, such as annual visits to St. John’s and to the Missouri Hotel, are volunteer efforts. At other events, he receives items in trade. At the event on Commercial Street, he’ll get paid in a hair permanent.
This is the first year Stone has charged for his appearances.
Although he stays pretty-well booked November through Christmas, Stone reserves the week before the holiday to return to where he started.
“The last week before Christmas is saved for the hospital,” he says. Because of his biology background, he says he knows the caution he must use to go into intensive care units.
“One Christmas I was at the hospital,” Stone recalls. “They paged me to come to neonatal ICU. I thought, ‘Those little fellows are too little to understand what Christmas is about.’ I went down there anyway.”
Stone picked up one of the babies and had a Polaroid photograph taken.
“The mother came back in,” Stone says. “They handed her that picture and said ‘Merry Christmas.’ She just collapsed on the floor crying. It made her little baby whole. It brought it into the real world.”
Stone says that experience emphasized the point that his portraying Santa isn’t just for children.
“We ended up doing 18 pictures of kids in neonatal ICU. We spent about two hours there. I realized about five or 10 minutes into this thing that it wasn’t just for the kids, it was for the parents and the nurses,” he says.
Last year, Stone visited 36 children in neonatal ICU.
Assignments for Stone through Santa America include scheduled visits with soldiers at Fort Leonard Wood as part of the Wounded Warrior Program on Thanksgiving and Dec. 15.
“We’re supposed to cheer up the troops who are leaving, in the hospital, and receive troops just coming back,” he says. “We’re going to do that this year for the first time.”[[In-content Ad]]
