Santa sure can sing: Carl Allen voices spirituals, spreads joy at nursing facility
LODI — You could live to see a thousand Christmases and you might never meet a Santa Claus quite like 69year-old Carl Allen of Lodi.
The retired maintenance man doesn’t just laugh from the belly. He sings from the heart.
On Wednesday, for about two dozen seniors who live at Lodi Nursing & Rehabilitation, Allen sang a few of the traditionals — “White Christmas,” “O Holy Night.”
But he mixed in some surprises, too. He belted out the national anthem to honor a former Navy SEAL who served two tours of duty in Vietnam. And he shared the old spirituals “Amazing Grace” and “To God Be the Glory,” raising his arms to the sky and clenching his fists like a preacher sharing the word.
As he sang, Allen walked slowly through the room filled with wheelchairs, clasping the hands of some who are sick or feeble, offering hugs and a few encouraging thoughts.
“It’s wonderful,” said Frieda Bettenhausen, who is in her late 90s. “This is what makes Lodi special.”
If Allen sounds different than the traditional Santa, some would say he looks different, too. In almost seven decades on this Earth he said he’s never met another black Santa. But it doesn’t matter in Lodi, he says, where after 15 years of donning the Santa suit on various occasions, he is accepted for who he is.
“They don’t even see what color I am, brother,” he said. “They’re blind to that. I’m just Santa.”
The son of a cement contractor and minister, Allen sang in church as a boy. At one point during a stint in Tennessee he says he was offered a job as a singer at the Grand Ole Opry.
“Sing like it’s the last day of your life,” he was taught. And he does.
He sang, even during the hard times when his family was on the edge of homelessness, before he got his job at the Lodi Unified School District. He sang, even when they were pulling furniture out of the garbage and fixing it up for sale.
He sang even while raising 10 children, who now have children of their own (Allen has 53 grandchildren so far, and counting).
Allen is even known to sing while cleaning and filleting fresh salmon from the Mokelumne River for distribution to needy Lodi-area residents — a messy job that’s a bit more pleasant when there’s a melody to share.
On Wednesday he handed out gifts to residents at the care home. “God bless you and keep you,” Allen told them.
“We love and cherish (the seniors),” he said earlier. “Some of them were teachers and doctors and workers and we appreciate everything that they’ve done in their lives. We love them.”
The Vietnam veteran, 60year-old Marvin Wilson, watched from his wheelchair. “It feels good,” he said, “because so many people are happy.”