Dick Scott was the Santa Claus that everybody in St. Cloud and surrounding communities wanted to see.
For 18 years, Scott donned his signature red suspenders — but not a Santa suit — and filled the chair at the Crossroads Center where toddlers, teenagers and even adults came year after year to sit on his lap and share their Christmas wishes.
In December, hundreds of adoring fans unknowingly posed for photos with their beloved Santa for the last time. Scott, 73, died of cancer March 1 in Sanford, Maine.
News of "Santa Dick's" death spread across social media sites, where scores expressed their gratitude to the man who made the holidays magical. They also shared a collective sadness that the man who loved children and took time to listen to them was gone.
Elizabeth Packert first brought her three boys to see Scott in the late 1990s when he started his gig at the St. Cloud shopping complex. The tradition continued every Christmas, including this past year, even though her sons are now 16, 18 and 21.
"I would not take them to see any other Santa," Packert said in a phone interview. "He touched their hearts like nobody ever has. He was so kind. You knew he was talking from his heart when he asked what they wanted for Christmas. He made you feel like he was the real Santa."
Scott was born in Portsmouth, N.H., and graduated from high school there in 1960. He served in the U.S. Navy for eight years before signing on at Honeywell. Scott worked there for 30 years. In his time off, he liked to bow hunt and fly model planes. He was a huge NASCAR fan, too. Before retiring from Honeywell, he thought about playing Santa Claus, and he started taking vacation time from his job to do so, said his daughter Lisa Fox, of St. Michael, Minn.
"That was something he always had in the back of his mind," she said. With his warm, gentle demeanor, "he took the whole Santa character and lived it. He kept his beard year round and kept trinkets in his pocket. He had the Santa spirit."
