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Press Coverage: Good Morning Lowcountry
Dec 2004
Today is Christmas Eve. Watch and listen while something almost otherworldly happens. As the day winds into evening and the solstice sun beams gold across the Lowcountry, everyone and everything seems to slow down. Businesses, already in a holiday mode, close one by one. Drivers -- unbelievably -- become almost courteous. People wave to each other. Acquaintances and strangers wish each other merriness. Tomorrow morning, if the season holds to form, dawns with a peacefulness no other time of the year matches. For nearly 24 hours, we get a glimpse of how the world could be. This is Christmas.
THE REAL SANTA: GMLc prides itself on prowess at getting the goods. In service of you, our readers, we have found -- are you sitting down? -- the real Santa Claus. St. Nicholas is from Holly Hill. He is a former Charleston RiverDogs and Family Circle Cup mascot. He is a marketing representative for COMDOC/DW Business Systems. And he has a 4-1/2-month-old son, Chapman, who was on Bryan Hutto's mind on the recent afternoon when he stopped by St. Luke's Lutheran Church in Summerville. Hutto had finished renewing a copier contract and was leaving when Jeanne Greene, the church's children's center director, came in disconcerted. Some 120 kids age 5 and younger were expecting a visit from Santa in the morning. The Santa she knew was sick with the flu. She couldn't find a replacement. Hutto had finished his business and was on his way out, but the kids made him think of Chapman. He said simply, "I'll do it." He took the red suit from Greene's car and came back the next morning. And! something magical happened. The kids oohed. A 2-year-old came running up to sit in his lap. He told his rapt audience that he'd like to hear them sing his favorite song, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," and a young voice from the back squealed, "That's my favorite song, too!" It was, Greene said, "like we had met the real Santa that morning." Chapman doesn't know yet how lucky he is.
THRASHER SANTA: Meanwhile, just across the street from St. Luke's, a few bands of teens with names like "Burns Out Bright," "To The Grave" and "Handgun Sonata," whose penchant for head-knocking music doesn't make them uniformly well thought of, made Christmas and birthdays for another bunch of kids. The bands and others have played at All Books & Company for a few years, usually on the weekends after hours. The music, says promoter Bradley Simmons, is a mix of hard core punk, thrasher and metal. "I can understand how somebody who doesn't know them would look a little skeptically at them," shop owner Michelle List said. "But they're really good kids." This year, Simmons scheduled eight bands for two shows, and -- not telling List -- raised to buy books for a Salvation Army Christmas program run through the shop. "It was a way of saying thank you to Michelle for putting up with us," Simmons said. With other donations, it was more than enough for the 120 children on the Salvation Army list. So List will use the remaining money to provide books as birthday presents.
To read the entire story please point your Web browser to:
http://www.charleston.net/stories/122403/loc_24gmlc.shtml
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