Taking on Santa's role in Lehigh is Willard Baker

In just a few days, Santa’s job will be over. Gone will be all the visits to the schools, the nursing homes, the hospital and hearing what the kids want for Christmas.

Locally, Willard Baker who has been playing Santa Claus in Lehigh for more years than he wants to remember, it’s a time to rest, but he will miss it.

“I’ve done it so long that I really enjoy it and look forward to it each year,” Baker said. He had just returned from a party put on by the Kiwanis Club to honor young people. And at Christmas, you can’t have such a program without Santa.

Baker in his new Santa suit, which he bought last year, has gone through a few over the 10 years that he’s been Santa. But after Christmas Eve, he’ll be hanging it up in the back of his closet, hopefully covered with plastic, waiting to come out next November when it all starts all over again.

His big arrival in Lehigh came earlier this month, when he arrived on a fire truck at Lehigh Regional Medical Center, where he posed with at least 300 individual kids to have their pictures taken with him. The photos are gifts from the hospital and have become a tradition, according to LRMC’s CEO Jose Morillo.

Bakes has lived in Lehigh for several years in the same house and each year has added more and more Christmas and holiday decorations both inside and outside. The family Christmas tree is on the front lanai and the whole screened-in area is filled with decorations and lots of Santa stuffed dolls.

“That’s my wife collection. She’s got more inside,” he laughed. “She helps me out a lot when she is not working. That is when she becomes Mrs. Claus and goes to such places as the nursing home and to friends’ homes.

Baker will take off the Santa suit Christmas Eve after he’s been to the home of friends Rick and Anglickis.

“That’s become a real tradition for us all. I used to go there when Rick and Ruth Ann were raising Robyn. Now they’re raising a niece and nephew and I’ve been there each Christmas Eve,” he said laughing. “We all exchange gifts and have a jolly good time,” he said. Rick Anglickis and Willard Baker go way back. Both have served on the Lehigh Community Council for years and each has served as president. Baker is active in his community and church and is well-known as an advocate for sidewalks for Lehigh. He serves on a county board, having been appointed the last time by Lee County Commissioner Frank Mann of Alva.

He is also an active member of the Lehigh Acres Community Planning Corp., and has served as its secretary for several years. The LACPC is responsible with the help of Lee County in having a land use plan done for the community of Lehigh. The Lee County Commission has paid for the study, examined it after public hearings, and has adopted it into its long range plan.

But civic interests aside, Baker says he probably enjoys playing St. Nick more than

anything else that he does and he hopes he can continue to the day he dies, he says.

This year has been interesting as for the children are asking for when they sit on his knee.

“Every little girl wants a doll baby or a Barby doll,” he said. “And the boys still want electronic games.”

“But there have been a lot of kids who have asked for clothes, not toys,” he said. “Sometimes I get a tear in my eye when I hear them not ask for a toy.”

Baker can recall all types of incidents that have happened to him from the usual screaming from a baby who is slapped on the lap of an old man with long white whiskers wearing a funny looking red felt hat that moves back and forth and rings a bell, to kids wetting on him and to others who punch his stomach to see if it is real to kids in yanking his white beard.

“My stomach is real,” is laughs. “Those little kids don’t have to guess anymore; they know I am real.

He can push a button on his Santa hat and make it move back and forth to let the kids know if they have been good.

“They like that,” he laughed.

Baker does all of this without compensation. He used to get paid by some organizations, but not any more, he said.

“I don’t know why,” he laughed. “But it doesn’t make any difference. I enjoy it when I see the happiness in the children’s eyes when they sit on my lap.”

Over the years, he’s been asked to stop by on Christmas Eve to a few friends homes so their kids can see Santa so the parents can rush the kids to bed to dream of sugar plums (today toys) in their heads.

On Christmas Eve, he will be attending, like he has for years, the Crosskey Rehabilitation Center next to the hospital.

“I go to the party room where they come to assemble and I have gifts for them. Then afterwards, I go to the rooms where patients are unable to get up from their beds and give them gifts.

“I know a lot of them,” said the 73-year-old Baker. “When my mother, who is now dead, was a patient there, she didn’t recognize me as Santa during her last Christmas,” he laughed. “I even fooled her.”

So don’t be surprised if you see him riding around Lehigh these last few days before Christmas Eve. He doesn’t change his suit when he goes from place to place.

You might even hear him shout out his window wishing you a Merry Christmas.

“It’s all a lot of fun,” he said.