Santa Claus battles cancer, spreads Christmas spirit in Georgia

Fletcher Page, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Dec 23, 2024

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ATHENS — The crowd buzzes as an anticipated star of the show appears.

Santa Claus waves to cheers as he makes his way up and down the aisles, shaking hands with adults and hugging kids as “Joy To The World” is played by dozens of musicians at the Athens Symphony.

Jolly Ole Saint Nick eventually takes off his coat and plops down on a bench. For more than an hour, through the end of the program, an encore and long after the music stops, he meets with kids who sit on his lap to list their Christmas wishes.

The grand entrance is a traditional highlight of the annual two-show weekend at the Classic Center in mid-December dating back more than a decade.

But three years ago, Santa couldn’t attend. The man in the red coat with white-fur trim and boots with bells that jingle — Jonathan Byrd, 66, of nearby Watkinsville — had been diagnosed with cancer just before the holiday season.

That December, gone were hugs and his witty lines used to gain trust with children. Instead, Byrd faced a dozen rounds of chemotherapy and a lifesaving surgical operation.

“We were going to do what we could, let God take care of the rest of it, and it would be what it would be,” he recalls.

Byrd has kept a long beard for decades, and he often thought about dressing up as the Big Red Guy. An encounter with a Santa Claus impersonator in the early 2000s provided Byrd, a longtime plumber and construction safety instructor, with advice to take on the role: He had to bleach.

“My beard, mustache, hair, eyebrows — it was a 9-hour day at the shop,” he says. “It was all bleached four times and then toner was put in.”

Byrd contends he’s not the kind of Santa Claus who runs an assembly line for pictures. He wants to visit with kids, talk to them, have fun. He says he takes too long with each child to make any money.

He tends to take his coat and hat off. This, he figures, makes him less imposing. He angles for laughs. Sometimes when a kid moves to sit on one knee, he’ll say that one is broken and to take the other. He plays the part at church, a pet-grooming shop and the symphony, where he’s not the sole attraction.

“You have to take the pictures as you get them,” he says, “because I’m not the one that’s going to sit there with a grin on my face until the kids finally look.”

In the fall of 2021, Byrd had COVID-19. Then his wife noticed he was jaundiced. Doctors discovered pancreatic cancer, the third-leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States, according to The National Cancer Institute.

The location of the pancreas, next to the stomach, liver and gallbladder tract, makes early cancer detection difficult, according to Dr. Charles Bodine, who treated Byrd. “Unfortunately, by the time we get it diagnosed, they’re typically more advanced.”

Byrd made calls to his usual stops as Santa. They needed to book another guy, he told them. The Athens Symphony decided if it couldn’t have Byrd, there wouldn’t be a Santa.

“There was no question there,” says Dick Hudson, the symphony’s executive director. “He looks more like Santa than Santa.”

Byrd’s emotions came out during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade that November. He didn’t yet have a treatment plan. He wasn’t sure about his future.

“I had a meltdown,” he says. “Here I was looking at my favorite time of year, not being able to do what I wanted to do.”

Byrd’s mother and father each had cancer. His dad battled liver cancer for 12 years, so Byrd said he knew the mentality required for the fight.

Rounds of chemotherapy were followed by a Whipple procedure, where parts of his pancreas, liver and gallbladder were removed. Surgery was expected to take seven hours. “I ended up on the table for 14,” Byrd says.

Doctors declared Byrd cancer-free after the surgery and issued additional rounds of chemo to finish his treatment.

As the Christmas season of 2022 approached, Byrd readied to resume his role as Santa, with an eye on the Athens Symphony as an important milestone for his recovery.

He emerged on stage to huge cheers, and he felt back to his former self, though there was a reminder of what he’d lived through.

“I had lost a lot of weight during treatment, so when I stepped down off the stage I about lost my belt,” he recalls. “I had to walk around holding my belt up because it was about to come off.”

On Wednesday, a few days after his symphony appearances, Byrd returned to University Cancer & Blood Center in Athens. Blood work determined he’s still cancer-free. Doctors recommended he come back in six months instead of the previous four-month test schedule.

After his checkup, Byrd, in his Santa outfit, visited patients receiving infusions for cancer and blood-related illnesses. Carol Drake smiled at Byrd’s quips in the lobby and said she wasn’t “sure which list” she’s on this year.

He told patient Angela Whitehead he wished he had invented saline that tasted and smelled like bourbon, to help with treatment side effects. Whitehead laughed. She and Byrd swapped stories about their cancer battles.

“There is life in spite of chemo,” he says. “It really is what you make of it.”