From The Christmas Warrior
By Cathy FreeKenneth Maryboy bought himself a used Santa suit. He was tall and skinny, and his black hair stuck out from under his cap in sharp contrast with his cheap white cotton beard. No matter that he didn't look the part—he was fulfilling a vow he'd made the previous year.
Back then, just before Christmas 1978, Kenneth was a passenger in a car traveling down a lonely road in the Navajo Nation in Utah. The night was dark, the driver was an elderly woman, and she struck and killed an eight-year-old boy.
Seeing the agony of the boy's family, Kenneth made a promise. He would "do whatever it takes to make children happy at Christmastime."
A year later, at age 18, he was living with his mother and younger brother on the reservation. They were barely making ends meet on his meager wages as a welder, but Kenneth bought the Santa suit and went around persuading people as poor as himself to give candy and fruit for families even more needy.
He strapped a cardboard reindeer to the front of his old red pickup, and just before midnight on a wind-bitten Christmas Eve, he went knocking on doors of dilapidated houses and trailers along the Utah Strip, the poorest section of the Navajo Nation. Many of the darkened homes didn't have electricity or plumbing.
Some families were afraid to open their doors so late at night. "It's a man! He has a big bag!" he heard a boy, holding up a lantern and watching from behind the curtains, tell his parents. Kenneth convinced them he was harmless with his echoing "ho ho ho!"
At every opened door, he handed out candy canes, oranges, mints. Many Navajo kids had never seen Santa Claus before, so his threadbare costume and store-bought beard didn't disappoint them. It touched Kenneth that they were excited by so little.
He kept it up year after year, gathering more "elves" to help him.
Kenneth is now 46 and commissioner for San Juan County. His solo Christmas Eve visits have grown into an annual Navajo feast with gifts of clothing, tools and toys for over 700 people. Kids who can't make it to the event because they're sick or lack transportation get a personal visit from Kenneth or one of his elves.
"My grandfather taught me that you learn to be a man and a warrior by sharing and by keeping promises," he says.
Christmas in July
Erika Orlando sits next to her fireplace, writing a Christmas card. Outside the living room window of her home in St. Louis, Missouri, snow is falling, soft flakes covering the world, and her mind shifts back to a summer day and a beach as bright as snow.
On a family vacation in Santa Rosa, Florida, earlier this year, Erika and her brother were sitting on a strip of warm white sand, having a serious conversation about faith. Children were splashing in the waves and playing on the shore. Just then, they heard a woman screaming, "Rob is missing!" The woman's husband ran toward the sea and began scanning the waves. Erika asked him to describe the child, but he seemed in shock and only gestured with his hand at a height just above his knee. She turned to the mother and asked the same question. "He has curly blond hair," the mother said, "and he's wearing a bright orange shirt. He's afraid of the water."
Bystanders came running to the shore from all over. For some reason, Erika found herself pulled in the opposite direction, toward a group of people sitting farther up the beach. "Have you seen a little boy in an orange shirt?" They shook their heads.
Erika began to pray. Her mind was open, peaceful, working fast. Orange shirt, not seen, afraid of water. Instantly she had an image of a hole in the sand. She scanned the beach. A few feet from where the missing boy's mother stood on the smooth white sand was a slight depression.
Erika fell on her knees and started digging. Handful after handful of hard, dry, drifting sand. Three inches, six inches. A foot down, her fingers tangled in something different, soft and fine. Strands of blond hair. She called out, "I think I found him!" <
Five minutes had elapsed from the time Rob's parents realized he was gone. Apparently he'd crawled into a hole other kids had shoveled, and the sides collapsed, completely covering him. By now, others had run up to help. As they dug, the sides shifted around the buried boy like sand sliding down an hourglass.
Lifeguards arrived to perform CPR. The crowd brushed back enough sand so that Rob's father was able to grasp him under his arms and hoist him free.
The boy's eyes opened. Sand stuck to his face, arms and body, dusting even his eyelids and the creases of his mouth. Yet the look on his face was absolutely peaceful. He didn't cough or cry. His mother took him into her arms and sat sobbing on the warm, sunny beach, thinking something miraculous had happened.
Snow continues to fall outside Erika's window. She looks down at the Christmas card she's started and begins to write, "Dear Rob."
A Joyful Noise
By Lynn RoselliniThree years ago, when Steve Baker's stepson was stationed in Iraq, the soldier received a birthday present from home. It was a guitar, and it was a hit. Word spread, and his buddies began asking for instruments.
Steve, a Vietnam veteran, and his wife, Barb, are longtime musicians who believe in music's power to soothe and inspire. They live in a mobile home, drive a Jeep with 174,000 miles on it, and run a music store in rural Minnesota that sometimes stays afloat on Steve's Social Security check. Yet the Bakers vowed that every serviceperson who asked them for an instrument would get one.
"With music, for just a minute, you're back home," Steve says.
Neither of the Bakers knew anything about fund-raising. But with friends, they organized a silent auction at the local American Legion in 2005 and raised $900. "We're rich!" crowed Steve. A distributor gave them a deal, and the Bakers sent off 22 guitars three days later.
They dubbed their effort Operation Happy Note, and in the ensuing months, Steve and Barb boxed and mailed banjos, mandolins, trumpets, clarinets, harmonicas and other instruments. A man in Iowa donated four boxes of violins. A left-handed guitarist sent four guitars for lefties. A retired couple in Florida mailed a check for $2,000.
Eventually Barb quit her part-time job to devote herself to Operation Happy Note. "We feel that this is our mission in life," she says. "The money isn't that important. We're not starving, and our light bill's paid."
These days, the back room at Fergus Music is jammed with boxes and bubble wrap. The computer holds a waiting list of over 300 servicepeople. "I send everything I can lay my hands on," says Steve. When a chapel at a base near Fallujah needed cymbals, Steve took four, worth $800, off the store's wall and wrapped them up.
Last Christmas, the Bakers shipped 48 guitars, drumsticks, harmonicas, and extra strings and picks. The instruments arrived in Iraq three days before Christmas. Staff Sgt. Louis Karsnia, a member of the Minnesota National Guard at Camp Taqaddum, a Marine logistical base, distributed them.
"Before, you'd see guys with their iPods on, listening to music, staying away from everybody else," says Sergeant Karsnia. "But when the guitars came, people got together. We'd have four or five guys playing guitar, and 25 or 30 others laughing and singing."
In the past three years, Operation Happy Note has sent nearly 630 free instruments to American troops around the world. Scores of e-mailed thank-yous from soldiers make it all worthwhile. This Christmas, the Bakers plan to ship Santa hats, decorations, holiday CDs and sheet music along with the instruments.
Sgt. Timothy Hall, a mapmaker in the 3rd Infantry Division, put it this way: "The music takes me away to another world—one that is peaceful and serene, where there is no hate, death or dirt." That sort of military transport is a miracle.
For more information, visit the Bakers' website at operationhappynote.com.
Room at the Inn
By Gary SledgeThe blizzard began Thursday night, three days after Christmas, last year. In their small adobe ranch house on Route 56, about 40 miles west of Clayton, New Mexico, five miles from the nearest neighbors, the Glover family was prepared.
By Friday morning, there was a total whiteout. Randy Glover, 39, was out in his workshop, talking to his wife, Christine, on a walkie-talkie when they picked up the voice of Clayton Shumaker, a stranger stalled on the highway. An accident had blocked the road, and as cars came to a stop, the snow trapped them, one by one.
At first, the travelers thought the road would be cleared and they could continue on their way. But after three hours, the blizzard still blowing, it was obvious no one was going anywhere.
Still in radio contact, the Glovers invited the Shumaker clan—six in all—to come to their house. They radioed directions because, though the Shumakers were less than 200 yards away, they couldn't see the house through the snow.
Once inside, the Glovers realized the plight of other motorists. People could die out there. So Clayton put his ski goggles back on and went out in the other direction to find cars stalled and snowbound on the road.
One by one, the wayfarers came—young and old, ages 4 to over 70—44 strangers in all. One had a heart condition. They came tired, scared, snow-blown, and were welcomed in.
It didn't take long for the hungry gang to go through Christine's two big bubbling pots of chili. Luckily one of the stranded stragglers was a truck driver who was carrying a load for four grocery stores. Given the situation, he opened his trailer—and there was enough for everyone.
The Glovers parceled out three beds, a recliner, the sofa and the floors. Randy picked a spot on the kitchen linoleum. "People helped in the kitchen, serving and washing dishes. And everyone was polite and considerate about using the one bathroom," Christine says. The crowd stayed two nights, some until New Year's.
Lance Glover, nine, and little sister Linzie, three, thought the blizzard and the night visitors were the "best fun they'd had for Christmas."
"We laughed, told stories, played dominoes and designed Blizzard of 2006 T-shirts," Randy says.
"The mood of the group was loving," Christine adds. "We got to know each other. We met people who will be friends for life."
Christmas came right on time last year. At the Glover house, out on the high northern plains of New Mexico, a series of blessings let it linger on a little longer.
Pennies from Heaven
By Julie BainMy dad loved pennies, especially those with the elegant stalk of wheat curving around each side of the ONE CENT on the back. Those were the pennies he grew up with in Iowa during the Depression, and Lord knows he didn't have many.
When I was a kid, Dad and I would go for long walks together. He was an athletic six-foot-four, and I had to trot to keep up with him. Sometimes we'd spy coins along the way—a penny here, a dime there. Whenever I picked up a penny, he'd ask, "Is it a wheat?" It always thrilled him when we found one of those special coins produced between 1909 and 1958, the year of my birth. On one of these walks, he told me he often dreamed of finding coins. I was amazed. "I always have that dream too!" I told him. It was our secret connection.
Dad died in 2002. By then, I was living in New York City, which can be exciting, or cold and heartless. One gray winter day, not long after his death, I was walking down Fifth Avenue, feeling bereft, and I glanced up and found myself in front of the First Presbyterian Church, one of the oldest churches in Manhattan. When I was a child, Dad had been a Presbyterian deacon, but I hadn't attended in a long time. I decided to go.
Sunday morning, I was greeted warmly and ushered to a seat in the soaring old sanctuary. I opened the program and saw that the first hymn was "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," Dad's favorite, one we'd sung at his funeral. When the organ and choir began, I burst into tears.
After the service, I walked out the front doors, shook the pastor's hand, stepped onto the sidewalk—and there was a penny. I stooped to pick it up, turned it over, and sure enough, it was a wheat. A 1944, a year my father was serving on a ship in the South Pacific.
That started it. Suddenly wheat pennies began turning up on the sidewalks of New York everywhere. I got most of the important years: his birth year, my mom's birth year, the year his mother died, the year he graduated from college, the war years, the year he met my mom, the year they got married, the year my sister was born. But alas, no 1958 wheat penny—my year, the last year they were made.
Meanwhile I attended church pretty regularly, and along toward Christmas a year later, I decided I ought to join. The next Sunday, after the service, I was walking up Fifth Avenue and spotted a penny in the middle of an intersection. Oh, no way, I thought. It was a busy street; cabs were speeding by—should I risk it? I just had to get it.
A wheat! But the penny was worn, and I couldn't read the date. When I got home, I took out my magnifying glass and tilted the copper surface to the light. There was my birthday.
As a journalist, I'm in a profession where skepticism is a necessary and honest virtue. But I found 21 wheat pennies on the streets of Manhattan in the year after my father died, and I don't think that's a coincidence.