The night Lou Marino turned his car around and went back to see that little boy in South Central Los Angeles told me all I needed to know about the man. The American Cancer Society had chosen the right guy for a tough job.
There were 16 kids with cancer who might not see another Christmas, and they wanted Lou to stand in for the jolly, old man – visit them at home, give them a hug, and a present – let them know Santa loved them.
I’ll take the job, Lou said. He put on his Santa suit, loaded his trunk with toys and crisscrossed Los Angeles County in his car a few days before Christmas, waving to all the people beeping their horns and shouting goodwill to Santa Claus making his rounds in broad daylight in a Lexus.
He was almost done by 8 p.m., but there was still one more child he hadn’t seen yet. He looked at the address on the list — it was all the way in South Central Los Angeles. Lou sighed, he was in the Valley only minutes from home.
It had been a long day and he was beat. He’d visit the kid in the morning, but something was nagging at him. What if that child was expecting him tonight? What if someone at the cancer society had called his parents and told them to keep him up, Santa was on the way?
Could he go to sleep with that on his mind? No, he couldn’t. He turned his car around and headed to South Central L.A. It was close to 9 p.m. when he knocked on the apartment door of a boy named Jose. Lou blinked when the boy opened it. Nothing on his list said he was also a Down syndrome child.
Looking over Jose’s shoulder, Lou saw seven other children waiting for Santa to come in, but no adults in the room. He hesitated, but Jose took his hand and walked him into the room to meet his brothers and sisters.
Think about it. What that boy must have been feeling. Here’s a kid with two big medical strikes against him, a kid people feel sorry for, holding the hand of Santa Claus, who had come to see him. Not anyone else. Him.
When Lou got ready to leave that night, Jose grabbed his arm, and said, “I love you, Santa Claus.” Lou took a deep breath to compose himself, and told Jose that Santa loved him, too, more than anyone else.
When he reached the end of the hallway, Lou turned to see Jose still standing there in the doorway, smiling ear to ear. Santa Claus loved him more than anyone else. Wow! I’m special.
He would scribble Santa a note every month, care of the cancer society, telling him how he was looking forward to seeing him again, and Lou would send a message back saying Santa couldn’t wait, either.
Jose never made it to December. He died in August.
“Whenever things get tough for me, I think about him, and I realize things aren’t so tough,” Lou told me. “What that little boy went through was tough. He was banged hard in life, and he was still filled with the most important, beautiful thing in life — love.”
I went on to write other columns and Lou went on to do what he always did right up until the end of his life at 84, three years ago. Every year, the American Cancer Society, charities, police officers and parish priests in the Valley would ask him for one more season standing in for the big guy, and Lou always said sure.
Now, I’m sitting here many years later reading a beautiful, handwritten letter that just arrived from Lou’s widow, Lucille, saying how she and Lou always enjoyed reading my column together in the morning, and how she still does.
It’s a compliment, I know, but all I can see is Lou’s smiling face as we walk across the baseball diamond at CSUN for a story I was going to write, but I can’t remember what it was. Another one came along that was better.
It was about a sick kid in South Central L.A. waiting for Santa Claus who lived in the Valley.
It was about the night Lou Marino, bless his heart, turned his car around.
Dennis McCarthy’s column runs on Sunday. He can be reached at dmccarthynews@gmail.com.