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Secret Santa reveals his identity at last
· Generosity born out of own experience of poverty
· Illness forces benefactor to retire from giving role
Dan Glaister in Los Angeles
Monday November 20, 2006
The Guardian
For years the portly man dressed in a red tunic and sporting a large white beard has been delighting unsuspecting strangers with his munificence. But now Santa has been forced to hang up his sleigh bells and stay at home - but not before revealing his true identity.
Over the last 26 years Larry Stewart, a 58-year-old businessman from Kansas City, has given $1.3m (£687,000) to strangers he met in the street. He started by handing out $5 and $10 bills to people who seemed down on their luck. With inflation and a rise in his own wealth - he has made millions running a cable television and long-distance telephone service - the gifts rose to $100 bills.
But Mr Stewart always insisted on anonymity, never revealing his identity and earning him the nickname Secret Santa. This spring, however, he was diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus, which has since spread to his liver. The $16,000 monthly cost of the chemotherapy is not covered by his health insurance policy, and the treatment has left Mr Stewart debilitated.
So he has decided to reveal his identity in the hope that he might inspire someone else to take over his Santa duties.
Mr Stewart still has a team of little helpers, who in recent years have given out $100,000 travelling between Chicago and Kansas City and he has also trained four deputy Santas who this year will hand out $65,000.
Over the years Stewart has become something of a reclusive celebrity, featured in news reports and appearing - in full costume - on Oprah Winfrey's television show, still hiding his identity. "Why, you are Santa incarnate," she told him. There is a Secret Santa website and even a book telling his story, Santa's Secret, A Story of Hope, written by a local journalist.
Stewart's generosity was born out of his own experience of poverty. In the early 1970s, poor and jobless, he resorted to living in his car, a yellow Datsun 510. One day he finally mustered the courage to approach a church to ask for help. He was told that the person who could help had left and he should return the following day.
"As I turned around, I knew I would never do that again," Mr Stewart told Associated Press.
By the late 1970s Stewart had a job and some money, but he was still plagued by misfortune. In 1979 for the second year in succession he was fired from his job in the week before Christmas. But when he saw a shivering, roller-skating waitress at a drive-in restaurant, he realised that were others worse off than him.
"It was cold and this carhop didn't have on a very big jacket, and I thought to myself, 'I think I got it bad. She's out there in this cold making nickels and dimes,' " he said.
He gave her a $20 bill.
"And suddenly I saw her lips begin to tremble and tears begin to flow down her cheeks. She said, 'Sir, you have no idea what this means to me.' "
Stewart went to the bank, withdrew $200 and drove around Kansas looking for people to give it to. The Secret Santa myth was born.
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2007-01-15 12:16:44
