(The following story by J.H. Osborne appeared on the Kingsport Times-News website on November 22. For a video report, visit: http://www.timesnews.net/article.php?id=9009159)
ABOARD THE SANTA CLAUS SPECIAL — Frigid temperatures, a dusting of snow along much of its 110-mile route, and an earlier, pre-dawn departure from its Kentucky starting point did not deter thousands of Santa seekers from seeking out the 66th annual Santa Claus Special.
More commonly called the Santa Train, the cooperative effort of the Kingsport Area Chamber of Commerce, Food City and CSX Transportation distributed more than 15 tons of gifts Saturday at 14 stops from Shelby, Ky., to downtown Kingsport.
Donations of gifts come from businesses, groups and individuals across the nation — and officials with all three sponsors said the strain on the nation’s economy had not had a negative impact on donations this year.
Volunteers contribute time to the effort as well, both on the train and off: a packing party earlier this week, to ready the train’s goodies for distribution Saturday, garnered a record-breaking crowd of around 250 people.
Grammy Award-winning singer Kathy Mattea was Santa’s special guest this year.
After visiting the packed train Friday night, Mattea said the anticipation of Saturday’s trek with Santa would likely make it hard for her to get to sleep — like a kid on Christmas Eve.
She said the amount of toys, food and other gifts donated to the train — “stacked from floor to ceiling” inside the train’s rear cars — was testament to an outpouring of compassion.
Hearing about the train, you can sort of picture it in your head, Mattea said, but actually seeing it readied for its run was a “visceral experience” for a first-timer.
Before her ride began, Mattea predicted the Santa Train’s passage would bless many along its route — but perhaps none more than herself and others who’d have the opportunity to be on the giving end of the Santa Train experience.
Saturday afternoon as the Santa Train neared Kingsport, Mattea said “It’s been great.”
With the day not yet over, some moments already were playing over and over in her mind, Mattea said.
One was of a young girl on her father’s shoulders, and how the girl reacted when she caught a small stuffed animal tossed from the train.
“It was like someone gave her a puppy,” Mattea said, wrapping her arms in a tight embrace across her chest. “She just hugged it.”
Another imprint: a spirit of sharing.
Sometimes those tossing gifts from the train will make eye contact with someone near the back of the crowd — and want to throw something to them, Mattea said.
“And you’ll see people in the middle kind of conspire to pass it back to that person,” Mattea said. “It’s been really neat. Some really neat stuff has happened in that way.”
Mattea said she also got a memorable response when she complimented a “tiny” little girl who was wearing a hat with ears on it.
“I said ‘Oh, your ears are so cute,’” Mattea said. “And she said ‘They’re kitty-cat ears — it’s just a hat.’”
The Santa Train left Kentucky at 6:30 a.m. Saturday. That’s an hour earlier than in recent years. The schedule change allowed the train to add several minutes to many of its stops. The extra time was to accommodate another change this year: an increase in the number of “ground crew,” who leave the train and distribute gifts directly to people in the crowds.
The goal was twofold. Sponsors hoped to make sure more people got gifts, and at the same time increase safety by throwing fewer items from the train.
The expanded ground crew were armed this year with pre-sorted gift bags (5,000 in all) containing boy-specific or girl-specific items, also categorized by age groups.
At several stops Mattea joined the ground crew and took gifts into the crowds.
“I love it,” Mattea said. “That’s been my favorite thing. I got off the train at one point and this woman said, ‘Come with me right now, I want you to meet my 91-year-old mother.’ So, she drags me through the mud — through the mud, black mud — and I didn’t care. And she didn’t care. And there’s her 91-year-old mother sitting there in her Santa hat and her red coat. She was just precious.”
At another stop, a woman in a wheelchair “jumped up and started singing as soon as I walked up,” Mattea said.
“She had the voice of an angel — just amazing,” Mattea said. “And she sang a Christmas carol I’d never heard.”
Mattea lives in Middle Tennessee, but is a native of West Virginia. (She spent much of Saturday in the “West Virginia.” That’s the name of the train car Santa uses each year.)
She said when she heads to West Virginia for a visit and begins to pass through the mountains of East Tennessee and then Southwest Virginia into Kentucky, she feels like she’s already home.
“This is my country,” Mattea said. “To me it’s like there’s this sort of sub-state … Eastern Kentucky, Southwest West Virginia, East Tennessee, and Southwest Virginia. But it’s sort of glued together by a way of life and the terrain and by the coal mining and a whole tradition. I feel like I know these people. They could be my cousins, they could be my aunts, they could be my grandparents. It’s familiar and it feels really good. It’s a really nice kind of touchstone back to my own family.”
Mattea said from the crowds she saw and mingled with on Saturday, interest in the Santa Train knows no economic boundaries — it attract both the well off and the struggling.
No matter which end of the economic spectrum they come from, getting a toy or a special glance from Santa can sometimes bring the same facial expressions.
“I’m struck by the look in people’s eyes,” Mattea said. “Some people you can see a real kind of desperate look, when you desperately want to make sure they walk away with something. And then, some people are just having a good time. And that doesn’t seem to matter what the economic picture is. Everyone seems to walk away with something. I also think that’s one of the wonderful things about traditions like this — they’re great equalizers. It doesn’t matter if you have money or you don’t have money. The Santa Train is still the Santa Train. You come, everybody gathers together, everybody gets to see Santa, all the kids get Santa bags, and everybody gets to visit. Everybody gets an equal experience. That’s the beautiful thing about it.”
“Making sure everybody gets something” and the development of what’s become the train’s ground crew are causes championed by a woman who’s known as “The Angel of the Santa Train.”
She was honored during a dinner Friday night in Kentucky. Her name is Regina Smith.
A 40-year employee of CSX based in Jacksonville, Fla., Smith is eligible to retire from the company by the time the train’s makes its 2009 run.
She’s credited with being the first to initiate on-the-ground gift distribution — albeit, “illegally” at the time — to try and make sure even those at the edge of Santa Train crowds get a little something.
Smith stressed she will retire from CSX — not from participating in the train.
The logistics of how she’ll continue to have a space on the train — once she’s no longer a railroad employee, either Food City or the Kingsport Chamber could be asked to give her one of their allotted slots on the train, for example — will have to be worked out.
“She’s a tradition in herself,” Chamber CEO and President Miles Burdine said as the Santa Train made its southward journey Saturday. “She actually started a tradition of getting out into the crowds with the goal of making sure all children get a gift.”
Burdine said Smith has just had a natural knack, a “special way,” with special-needs children along the train’s route.
“They look for me each year and I always find them,” Smith said of individual children, and their families, that she’s gotten to know over the years.
The opportunity to ride the train and help distribute gifts is a life-altering experience, Smith said.
“You’ll make friends and you’ll make memories you will never, never forget,” Smith said.
Asked if she ever has any teary-eyed moments on the train, Smith said “I don’t slow down long enough to do that.”
When she enters a crowd at any one of the train’s stops, Smith said it’s often a last-minute decisions about what gift to give which child.
“You just look at that kid and you know what to give them,” Smith said.
As one stop was drawing to a close Saturday, she encountered a little boy crying, Smith said.
She searched her pockets and all she had left was a little package of cookies.
“That was it,” Smith said. “It stopped the tears.”
This was Smith’s 15th year going out into the Santa Train’s crowds to distribute small gifts to the folks around the periphery.
Make that 15th year “officially” allowed to do so.
Smith started the practice on the sly. As a CSX employee and member of the train’s crew, she was permitted to get off the train and go into the crowd — but rules at the time forbid any distribution of gifts other than by tossing them from the train.
But Smith noticed children at the far reaches of crowds not getting anything. She started bringing small items with her on the train — things she could put inside her coat and smuggle, as it were, into the crowd.
“By the third year, I had the biggest coat you could have,” Smith said with a laugh at the dinner Friday night.
Her mission didn’t go unnoticed, however. Someone saw her — and wrote a letter to the editor to say how much they appreciated it.
“She told on me,” Smith said.
But the revelation led Santa Train officials to give Smith the go-ahead to continue her outreach with their seal of approval.
In the years since, what she does grew to include a ground crew at all stops.