Santa’s son: Once upon a time, there was a littleboy who didn’t believe in Santa Claus. Then he got adopted by him.

Editor’s note: This story was first published on the front page of the Ledger-Enquirer on Christmas Day, 2007.

When the boy was 4 years old, he heard about a fat man from the North who rode to children’s houses all over the world in a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer so he could slide down the chimneys and leave presents under the trees and candy in the stockings.

The boy didn’t believe that for a minute. Children didn’t live in houses. They didn’t have stockings or even socks or shoes. And nobody ever gave them anything.

The boy was born in 1945 in Baker Sanitorium in Charleston, S.C. His parents named him Harry Charles Meyer Jr. and decided to call him Chuck. Then they took him across the river to Mt. Pleasant, opened another bottle and forgot about him.

At the age of 3, the boy was living on the street. He was hungry and dirty and his wild blond curls were filled with microscopic animals. The people of Mt. Pleasant wondered where he slept and what he ate and how he stayed warm at night when the wind whipped off the Atlantic.

Seeing a little boy roaming the streets made them sad, and they hoped somebody would do something.

Department store Santa

Harry Archer Westcott stuffed the pillow inside his red coat. He wrapped the cotton beard around his face. Then he took the elevator to the second floor of Condon’s Department Store and climbed on the big chair.

Mr. Westcott realized that the main Santa Claus lives at the North Pole. But this was 1949, long before a guy was standing on every corner pretending to be St. Nick. Even a big city like Charleston had just one Santa Claus, and he was Mr. Westcott.

Charleston’s Santa Claus sat on his throne and scanned the line of children. Some were going to burst into tears. Some were going to pull his beard. And then there were the mothers. You had to watch the mothers.

A little girl climbed into his lap and hugged the pillow.

“Have you been a good little girl?” he asked.

“Oh yes, Santa!” she cried.

“Then what would you like me to bring you?”

“I want a bicycle!” she said. “I’ve been very, very good!”

He saw her mother. He saw the threadbare coat. He looked in her sad eyes.

He hugged the child. “Where do you live?” he whispered.

The empty bedroom

Mr. Westcott went home to Queen Street. He took off his shoes and sank into his chair. Theodora warmed a plate.

“Mack’s out fighting a fire,” she called from the kitchen.

The two-story house had three bedrooms: One for him and Theodora, one for Mack the boarder, and one for

The third bedroom was empty.

He closed his eyes.

He was 55 years old. Born in Pennsylvania. Quit school after the eighth grade. Chasing after Pancho Villa in Mexico. Gassed in the trenches in Europe. Radio personality in the nation’s capital. Acted with Harry Morgan, who played Col. Potter in M*A*S*H. Moved to Charleston. Got a new station off the ground. Met Theodora. Another war -- running public relations for Charleston Shipyards. Published a shoppers guide. Took the stage at the Dock Street Theatre. Played the doctor in “Mr. Roberts.”

Now he was a driver and dispatcher for the Carolina Cab Company. Still acting in his spare time. And still Charleston’s Santa Claus.

He looked at Theodora. She was 47. A Charlestonian. Her father had run off with another woman when she was a little girl, and then her mother died of tuberculosis. Adopted by her uncle, a country doctor. Went to college at the age of 16 and made the varsity swimming, field hockey and basketball teams.

Trained as a teacher. But the children were rough. Sometimes they would put their legs in front of the trolley and dare the conductor to roll forward. One day the conductor couldn’t stop the trolley and a boy lost his leg.

Instead of a teacher, she was secretary to the president of the College of Charleston.

Mr. Westcott thought about the girl who had asked for a bicycle. He and Theodora loved children. They spent time with them and helped them. It wasn’t quite the same.

Unbelief

Over in Mt. Pleasant, the little boy still roamed the streets and people still watched him and felt sad and hoped somebody would do something.

Finally, somebody did do something. If it were the movies, it would have been somebody kind-hearted and rich. But it was real life and so it was a kind-hearted man with four children and not much money. The kind-hearted man talked to his wife, who was also kind-hearted, and they decided to bring the boy to their house for Christmas.

The boy couldn’t believe how warm the house was. Or how big the table was. Or how much food was on it.

The boy sat at the big table and ate and ate. The other children watched and giggled.

“We’re going to Charleston to see Santa Claus,” the father said.

“I don’t believe in Santa Claus,” the boy said.

“What do you want for Christmas?” the father asked.

The boy thought. He was warm and clean and eating food. He thought some more.

“A yellow top,” he said. “A red ball.”

Wish list

Charleston’s Santa sat on his throne on the second floor of Condon’s. A man touched him on the arm. “See that little boy over there?” he asked.

Santa looked at the boy with the wild blond curls.

“He’s had a hard life and he doesn’t believe in Santa Claus,” the man said.

“What does he want for Christmas?” Santa asked.

“A yellow top,” the man said. “A red ball.”

Meeting Santa Claus

The music was strange and loud. The trees were tall and blinking with lights. The air smelled of popcorn and pine.

And the man in front of him was wearing red pajamas and tall boots and sitting on a throne. He had a pillow in his shirt and cotton on his face.

Somebody put the boy on the man’s lap.

“Ho, ho, ho!” the man said. “Do you believe in Santa Claus?”

“No,” the boy said.

“I suppose you don’t want him to bring you a yellow top?” he said. “Or a red ball?”

The boy’s eyes were like saucers.

Back on Queen Street

Mr. Westcott went home to Queen Street. Theodora saw his headlights and started warming a plate.

He stepped inside the kitchen. “Come here,” he said. He put his arms around her.

“I met a little boy today,” he said.

Another Harry

Over in Mt. Pleasant, Harry Westcott tracked down the boy’s father. His name was Harry, too -- Harry Meyer. There were two other children, a boy going into the Army and a teenage girl. And another child on the way. It made Harry Westcott want to cry.

“I can give your son a good home,” he said.

“Take him,” Harry Meyer said. “But I’m getting back on my feet. I’ll get him in a year.”

A new world

Theodora Westcott took some old coffee cans and stretched a piece of canvas over them to make a little seat.

It was five days after Christmas. She put the coffee-can seat in the back of the car, and then she and Harry drove to Mt. Pleasant.

From his coffee-can seat, the boy could see out the window. The man who called himself Pappy was driving them over the Cooper River Bridge. The woman who called herself Mama was asking him if he could see the river.

Yes, he could see the river. He had never seen the river before.

He saw a lot of things he had never seen before. Like the upstairs room in the house on Queen Street. His own room! The woman who called herself Mama had put things in the room. His own things! There were tops and balls and a little fan by the bed and football shoulder pads and a Donald Duck from Disneyland.

There was a warm room downstairs, where the woman who called herself Mama made good food. In the morning there was something called bacon and eggs.

There were friends, lots of friends, sitting at the kitchen table laughing and talking and picking meat from ocean animals called crabs.

There was a dog named Buddy.

There wasn’t any candy. The man who called himself Pappy couldn’t eat sweets.

But there was a man who lived in the house too, named Mack, and he had so much energy that he was in the Army and in the fire department at the same time. On Saturday mornings Mack would take the boy to Silver’s Nickel and Dime and give him 50 cents to get whatever he wanted. It took a long time to spend that much money.

The man who called himself Pappy would take the boy down to the Dock Street Theatre to watch him stand on the stage and pretend to be other people. Afterward, the audience would cheer, and then he and the boy would go to the cast party and eat fancy food, and then play with the costumes and the makeup.

Every day, the boy would ride the bus to kindergarten with the woman who called herself Mama. When it was cold and they were standing at the bus stop, Mama would unbutton her long coat and then draw the boy to her and button him up inside.

Pretty soon he was calling them Pappy and Mama without even trying. Christmas came around again and Pappy was going to Condon’s and another big store called Belk’s to stuff the pillow in his shirt and wrap the cotton around his face.

When Charleston’s Santa Claus would come home and sink into his chair, the boy would climb in his lap. Pappy had big hands, and he would wrap an arm around the boy and put one of those big hands on his chest. Even when Pappy was gone, the boy could feel that arm around him and that big, warm hand.

Official papers

A year passed and the boy’s father never showed up.

One day some papers arrived.

They contained words like “adjudged” and “decreed” and “henceforth” and “reciprocal.” Basically, the words meant that Harry A. Westcott and Theodora T. Westcott had adopted Harry Charles Meyer Jr., and that he was as good as their natural child, and that his name was now Harry Anthony Westcott.

Basically, he had been adopted by Santa Claus.

Growing up

The boy grew up and today is an engineer for the city of Columbus, where he’s worked for 37 years.

Most people know him as Harry Westcott. His wife Lydia calls him “Tony,” as Mama did even after he decided to go by Harry.

When Harry was 13, Pappy died of complications from diabetes and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. He was 62.

Mama lived to be 85 years old, and died in 1989. She made sure her son went to the best schools in town.

For high school, she sent him to one of the finest boarding schools in the country.

Mack, his godfather, had a big family of his own and was an insurance adjuster and longtime volunteer fireman at Tybee Island. He died this year at the age of 84.

Harry never had a desire to track down his natural parents. Once he visited his older sister and found her living the same life their parents did. She looked twice her age.

When he became a Christian as an adult, Harry would sometimes look at his adoption papers and think about how being saved by Jesus was kind of like being saved by Harry and Theodora.

Today, he visits their graves and feels the power of being loved, of getting a gift when you have nothing to give.

“If they hadn’t come in and adopted me, I probably wouldn’t be here,” says Harry, now 66. “I’d have had an awful life -- I’m sure of that.”

Sometimes Harry gets a list of families from Valley Rescue Mission and goes out and helps children.

“That’s the kind of thing Pappy would have done,” he says.

Harry has three children: Mark, an Army veteran who’s married with two children and working in insurance in Philadelphia; Ellen, a school teacher married with two children in California; and Matthew, a combat engineer stationed at Fort Stewart who returned last Christmas from a deployment to Iraq.

Like Mama, Harry taught them the importance of a good education. Like Pappy, he took them to the theater.

And he told them about a man from the North who moved down to the South so he could stuff a pillow in his shirt and wrap cotton around his face and make a little boy happy.

He told them about Santa Claus, and they believed.

Dimon Kendrick-Holmes, managing editor/content, can be reached at dkholmes@ledger-enquirer.com

This story was originally published December 23, 2011 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Santa’s son: Once upon a time, there was a littleboy who didn’t believe in Santa Claus. Then he got adopted by him.."