Posted on 12/21/2002 6:45:57 AM PST by GailA
Jolly ol' Joe always in Nick of time St. Jude's Santa marks 80th visit
By Tom Bailey Jr. baileytom@gomemphis.com December 21, 2002
The children formed a remarkable line to Santa's lap Friday at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
They approached St. Nick with their limps, their scarred scalps, their tethering tubes, their masked faces, their bald heads, their wigs, their tracheotomies, their crutches and with inky X's on their skin showing where to aim the radiation.
Some staggered to Santa, exhausted from the day's cancer treatment. One was so tired, she never woke as Santa placed gifts in the toy wagon she lay in.
It might have been just another day of chemo and radiation therapy, MRI's, X-rays, general examinations and rehab.
But Joe Farris of Douglas, Ga., did it again.
For the 80th time in 40 years, jolly Joe traveled 500 miles to play Santa Claus for St. Jude children.
That's 40 Christmases and 40 "Christmas in July's."
As usual, he brought a U-Haul trailer filled with 1,200 presents.
Students in Douglas, Pelham and Albany, Ga., each donated a new gift, as they do twice a year, every year. Students from Douglas's Coffee High School wrapped them.
Like a Yuletide Superman, the high school teacher wore a dark suit to present St. Jude officials $3,000 raised with roadblocks and business donations in south Georgia this year.
"I hear the bells go off. I think I got to go," said Farris, whose brown eyes widen - and often moisten - when he speaks of the hospital.
Farris slipped from the podium into the men's restroom.
As a befuddled man at the urinal twisted for a look, Farris stood sock-footed at the sink putting on a red suit and white beard.
"I get a new one every year," he said of the Santa suit. "They don't want germs on it."
Ten minutes later, Santa emerged from the restroom shouting "Ho, ho, ho!"
The line of children in St. Jude's Research Tower atrium stretched 100 feet into a hallway.
Farris asked for names and ages.
He'd repeat the age loudly and in mock surprise. "Ten years old!" he'd bellow so volunteers could quickly pull two age-appropriate gifts for him to hand over.
Santa, a retired journalism teacher, would even flirt with the mothers.
"I thought you were one of the children, you're so pretty and young," he told one.
Most of the children in line were outpatients. When the line ended, Farris took gifts to 60 children in rooms upstairs.
His support for St. Jude started 45 years ago when he attended a comedy show in Atlanta by Danny Thomas, who founded St. Jude. Afterward, Thomas asked Farris to help raise money to build the hospital.
"As long as God gives me good health, I'll keep coming until the day I die," Farris said. "I believe in miracles."
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