Santa Works On Christmas Present Stint As Mall St. Nick Helps Veteran Heal

Santa was a sniper in the Vietnam War.

During his first tour of duty in 1969, David McCormick was assigned the odd combination of sniper-cum-medic, a job that demanded he take lives and save lives, depending upon which side of the line they fell.

Those duties took a heavy toll. For years afterward, McCormick found himself avoiding people, avoiding life - “bunkering in,” in veteran’s terms.

As a part-time mall Santa, McCormick has found a redemption of sorts.

Retired from the U.S. Army and the Marine Corps, the Chehalis man hasn’t spent much time in the big red suit. But the opportunity he had two years ago to play Santa for a day was a turning point, he says, and he’ll have the chance again this season when the Lewis County Mall needs a substitute St. Nick.

“I was sitting around Christmas-time feeling depressed,” McCormick says, recalling that holiday season two years ago when the old war demons were surfacing.

His wife, Cheri, told McCormick to “snap out of it,” he says. ‘What if I played Santa,” McCormick remembers thinking. So he called Patty Broom, director of the Lewis County Mall, and offered to act as a volunteer Santa.

“It finally put Christmas in perspective for me,” says McCormick, who, at 50 years of age, has lived a life of extremes.

As a child growing up in Rochester, N.Y., McCormick never had the chance to sit on Santa’s lap and tell the jolly old elf what he would like for Christmas. There were no visions of sugarplums in McCormick’s world, in which reality was a bit more gritty than Christmas trees and candy canes.

Until he was 5 years old, McCormick lived with his mother and her alcoholic husband, he says.

“My stepfather would come home drunk and fight with my mom and I would get into the middle of it,” McCormick says. “I was only 5 or 6, but that was my mother.

“My stepfather gave my mother an ultimatum: ‘You either get rid of him or I’ll do something with him,”’ he says. “I was placed in a home called Hillside Children’s Center.”

Living there until he was 18, McCormick learned many things. But one overriding lesson stayed with him through adulthood.

“You get that feeling of abandonment that doesn’t go away,” he says in a slow and quiet voice. “You learn not to trust.”

As he talks, McCormick looks around his comfortably cluttered living room. Even there, the man’s dichotomous life is evident.

Mementos of war mingle with the many satin-gowned porcelain dolls McCormick has made. A couple of parakeets warble background music and a fish tank bubbles quietly in the corner as the veteran talks about his life before the war, a life nearly devoted to God.

“I had some EMT training and had worked on an ambulance,” McCormick says, recalling his life after leaving the children’s home. “Then back in ‘67 or ‘68, I kind of left that alone and went to Holy Cross Monastery in West Park, N.Y.”

McCormick was confirmed into the faith and was ready to become a novice at the Episcopal abbey when the abbot suggested the younger man enter the service.

“Draft dodging was going on big time,” McCormick says. “Father Superior said I should get my military obligation out of the way, so I wouldn’t be using the monastery as an escape.

“I did like 15 years in the service, in the Army,” he says. “I stayed out for about a month, maybe a month and a half, and then I just went down to the Marine Corps recruiting office and signed up.”

Although there is a stipend for playing St. Nick, McCormick says the money is secondary - the job’s the thing.

“All I wanted to do is experience what it would be like to be Santa Claus,” he says. “It’s a humbling experience, and there’s a lot of joy there that I’ve never experienced.”

McCormick is looking forward to playing the beloved old elf for even more personal reasons this year, he says.

“I’m hoping my grandson can come this year,” says the Santa with the faded blue tattoo. “This will be his first time with Santa. I want that to be me.”