ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, September 26, 1996 TAG: 9609260069
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: NEWS OBIT
SOURCE: JOANNE POINDEXTER STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Below
MARCUS HARRISON, as he was known the rest of the year, died Tuesday at the age of 84.
For more than 50 years, Marcus Harrison donned a red suit with a big black belt and boots and added white whiskers to become Santa Claus to hundreds of children and elderly people in the Roanoke Valley.
In 1981, heart surgery two weeks before Christmas grounded the Salem man, who had been Santa at department stores and in Christmas parades since he was a 15-year-old schoolboy growing up in Russell County.
Two years after his surgery, Harrison was back being "Santy," but he began limiting his holiday visits to just the elderly and frail.
A retired federal employee, Harrison would pinch from his retirement pension to buy little gifts for the elderly at Christmas so they would know that someone remembered them. Older people, he once said, need Santa just as much as children.
He handed out cards with a Santa Claus picture and poems he had composed to people he met in stores and on the street.
Harrison died Tuesday at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Salem, where he had worked for more than 40 years. He was 84.
He was a tall, lanky man who lingered over the frail and elderly he visited with Christmas goodies. He spoke in the tone you would imagine a real Santa using.
His mother made his first Santa outfit with red flannel normally used to make "bloomers" for his sisters. He wore the outfit when he stepped in to play Santa for his school's Christmas party.
He always stressed that he was not Santa, but was "just playing the part." That role, he said in a newspaper interview, "put a little sunshine in many lives, and it has put a whole lot in mine."
Although he still tried to do little things for others, Harrison had begun limiting his activities a couple of years ago because of his own health and the need to take care of Helen, his wife of 54 years.
"His plate was full," said Shirley Dowdy, Harrison's daughter. Dowdy said her mother needed constant care after a fall about four years ago; her father not only provided that care, but also still tried to send little gifts and boxes of candy to the elderly.
Harrison wrote in a newspaper commentary in December 1985 that Santa is all the good things a parent should be and that he "will endure as long as there are children who need to be happy."
Time was running out for him, and someone else would eventually assume his Santa role, Harrison wrote.
"But I'll be there. You may not see me. But then, do you know anyone who has really seen Santa?"
LENGTH: Medium: 58 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshot) Harrison.by CNB