ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 22, 1996 TAG: 9612230009
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-22 CURRENT EDITION: NEW RIVER
SOURCE: DONNA ALVIS-BANKS STAFF WRITER
The date was Dec. 23.
The place was a busy highway away down south in Dixie.
Mike Goree was speeding along in his '76 Volare - caught up, no doubt, in the hustle and bustle of the season - when something caught his attention.
It might have been that blaring siren.
Or it could have been those flashing blue lights.
Goree pulled his Plymouth to the side of the road and checked the rearview mirror just in time to behold the imposing figure of a Mississippi highway patrolman lumbering toward him.
He rolled down the window on his driver's side and found himself face-to-face with a shiny badge.
The officer took one look at Goree and shook his head.
"Buddy, I don't know who you are," he drawled, "but I couldn't possibly give you a ticket this close to Christmas. ... "
Turning back to his cruiser, the patrolman left Goree with just a warning:
"You'd better slow those reindeer down!" |n n| No matter how big you are, Mike Goree has the look that'll make your heart skip a beat.
Long silvery hair, fluffy white beard, blue eyes twinkling (yes, twinkling!) behind wire-framed spectacles - take a gander at Goree and you'll find yourself faced once again with that nagging question:
Is there really a Santa Claus? |n n| "The first time I did a Santa was in 1967. It was at an orphanage in Mississippi called Palmer Home," said the 48-year-old Goree. "At that point, I didn't have a beard. I used a store-bought one."
He had to improvise, he explained, because he was in the Navy and facial fluff wasn't regulation military.
"When Zumwalt became Chief of Naval Operations, he said you could have a beard," Goree recalled. "That was in 1970, and that's when I quit shaving."
Goree's wife, Cathy, gave him his first Santa suit as an anniversary gift one December. He ordered himself a "belly booster" from the Spiegel catalog and the rest, as they say, is history.
He never claimed to be the real thing, though. Calling himself "Santa's best friend," Goree has donned his suit for church programs, private parties, Christmas parades and television shows. He even had to catch an airplane one time while wearing the red rig.
Accustomed now to wide-eyed stares and double takes, Goree has spent the past 30 years trying to fill some mighty big boots.
"The spirit of Santa is as important as the look of Santa," he says. "I take the Santa myth very seriously. It's an image that carries a lot of power."
Goree laughs as he remembers the time a little kid came up to him in the mall late in January one year.
"He kicked me in the shin and said, 'Dammit, I told you I wanted a jeep!'"
When the chuckles subside, he explains how he handled the situation:
"I knelt down and put my hand on his shoulder and said that even Santa can't always bring us everything we want."
Naughtiness from children is the exception, Goree insists, not the rule.
Ask him who really needs lessons in good behavior and he'll tell you.
"Some parents are real creeps. They'll bring their child up to me and say, 'See - he's been bad all year!' I don't see Santa as a disciplinarian.".
Goree, who has a bachelor's degree in psychology and a master's in counseling, nevertheless relies on his sixth sense when he answers children's questions.
Some answers just aren't in the books.
"The kids always want to know about the reindeer," he says. "How do they fly? What do they eat? I tell them bags and bags and bags of Purina Reindeer Chow!"
And, he has learned, sometimes the answers are just hard to accept:
"I had a child tell me one year that all he wanted for Christmas was for his grandmother to come back to life."
Every year on Christmas Eve, Goree puts on his red suit and visits local hospitals. He heads for the pediatric ward to find the children who need some cheering up.
The strange thing is it works both ways.
Perhaps that's why Goree doesn't hang up the spirit of Christmas when he hangs up the red suit. He wears it day in and day out.
"The spirit of Santa is what keeps the world sane," he says. "If we can have that love one day, we can have it all year long."
Mike Goree moved from Mississippi to Blacksburg two years ago when his wife, Cathy, became Virginia Tech's dean of students. He's now a counselor for student support services at New River Community College in Dublin. The Gorees live in Blacksburg with their children, Walt and Anna. Their oldest son, Michael, is a junior at St. John's College in Annapolis, Md.
LENGTH: Medium: 96 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Alan Kim. 1. Nine-year-old Anna Goree gets to spend someby CNBtime with her dad, Mike Goree, after her basketball game at Kipps
Elementary. He was at the school on a Saturday morning to pitch in
for a fund-raising pancake breakfast for the school's safety patrol.
2. Mike Goree's livense plate says it all. Goree poses with his
9-year-old daughter, Anna (ran on NRV-1). color.