Hanging up the red suit

Dave Stoufer has been spreading Christmas cheer to children and adults alike for 50 years.

This year, though, the 80-year-old has decided to hang up his red wool suit.

Stoufer’s foray into the world of spreading Christmas cheer 50 years ago came quite by chance.

“I was working in a retail store in Fort Dodge, Iowa, and I had been active in community theater,” Stoufer said. “At that particular time, I had a Shakespeare-like mustache. I had brownish hair, and I was fairly skinny.”

It was Christmastime, and one of his co-workers, knowing that Stoufer was involved in community theater, asked if he would be willing to dress up and pay a visit to her granddaughter.

He suggested that the co-worker take her daughter to one of the local malls instead.

“She said, ‘You don’t understand, Dave. My granddaughter is in a bed in my living room dying. The doctors can make her comfortable, but that’s all, and we can’t afford to take her someplace, so there she is,’” Stoufer recalled.

He agreed and rented a suit from the local community center.

“I think I paid five bucks for the rental,” he said. “It was a terrible thing, and the beard smelled like people had smoked and everything else in it.”

Putting on the costume did not convince him he was right for the part, but he went to visit the girl anyway.

“I went, and the little girl believed because she wanted to believe,” Stoufer said. “I guess when I left, I was kind of hooked.”

His love of little children spurred him to continue, and he found that he was good at it.

“I don’t look like the Easter bunny, so I don’t hop around,” Stoufer said. “It was something I could do. I developed a persona.”

Back in the days before his hair was white and his stomach was not quite as jolly, he bought a stomach so he could better look the part.

“You can buy stomachs,” he said. “They make you look like Ninja Turtles.”

His beard was not as white as it is now, so he used the white theater hair spray for his beard.

“I went through a period of time when I went to a beauty shop, and they bleached out my beard, then put purple stuff in it to get rid of the yellow,” Stoufer said. “That was a pain. It was just something — I don’t know. I just wanted to do it.”

About 40 years ago, Stoufer moved to Washington to work for the radio station.

After he and his wife, Washington native Rachel Nicola, married they left for about a year, but then returned.

“I worked at a radio station in Mason City and one in Iowa City,” he said. “Then, I bought the rubber stamp business (Custom Impressions), and we moved it to Washington. We’ve been here ever since.”

Over the years, Stoufer grew more and more into his Christmastime role, both physically and mentally.

He said that what he did was hard work.

“You have to like kids,” he said. “You have to make the entire experience be about the children. That’s No. 1.

“No. 2, it’s a theatrical event. You are the performer from the time you get out of your car and walk into the place where the chair is.”

There were plenty of opportunities in the area to use that hard work.

“For a number of years, Modine Manufacturing had a Christmas party for their employees and their children,” Stoufer said. “They hired me to come to that. I have read stories to classes at St. James. In the past, I have visited disadvantaged children.”

He and his wife decorated a 60-foot trailer home to look like two cabins standing next to each other.

“We had a platform in that with all kinds of movable things and six different scales of model railroads,” he said. “When that fell apart because it got all wet and got all old, we started finding places around the Square. I always try to look for a place where I could take one of my Santa model railroad layouts.”

He has to model railroad layouts. One is four-feet-by-six-feet, and one is four-feet-by-eight-feet. They can run together, or they can run separately.

“Kids would go crazy for that,” Stoufer said. “I would run Thomas the Tank Engine and his cars around it for the kids to see. Every event that I went to was special.”

Stoufers wife put in plenty of hard work as well.

“She is the one who goes to get the change; she is the one who gets the photographers; she is the one that sits in when a photographer doesn’t show up; she’s the one who made sure that I have a fan, because it’s warm in that wool suit; she’s the one that brings the pop; she’s the one that helps me get ready, because I have some physical challenges that make it hard for me to put on boots and shoes, so she takes care of that,” Stoufer said. “She’s probably busier running around doing things as a support person than I am sitting on the chair. I might think that I work a little harder, but I’m not really convinced of that.”

All of that hard work had its rewards.

“The high-fives. The hugs. Getting little children who were afraid to not be afraid. Getting to tease and play with them,” Stoufer said. “I’ve held babies that were on their way home from the hospital after being born. They were just a couple, three days old.

“There have been special needs kids that have come through that I’ve been able to relate to.”

For several years, he was a regular Christmas visitor at a Down syndrome support group in Iowa City.

“I could relate to those children very well,” he said. “It’s what I do. That’s who I am.”

What Stoufer has been over the years is a minister of sorts.

“I believe that it’s been a ministry,” he said. “I’m a Christian, and I’m not ashamed of it, and I have been a minister in churches.

“I believe that being Santa is also a ministry.”

Looking back, as he hangs up his red suit, Stoufer reflected on what he’ll miss about his year spreading Christmas cheer.

“I will miss naiveness of little kids, the trusting of little children, the seeking of knowledge by little children, all of the things that little children have that adults grow out of and makes little children easy to be around,” he said. “I probably will miss being in the red suit and all of the things that go with it, having fun, leading the parade and whipping people up downtown.

“I’ll miss it, but I know that there are younger folks coming along that will be glad to take it over.”