Guitar player turned Santa finally won her heart
Debbie Dickerson and Darrell Trickett might sometimes forget their wedding anniversary as they go about their busy lives, but the Christmas season rarely escapes their notice. That’s when Darrell’s beard, lightened from a dark brown shade when they married to almost white, helps him transform into Santa.
Of course, they had no idea that was in their future when they first met, back in 1981 when Darrell was going to the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg and Debbie was at Jones County Junior College in Ellisville, Miss., and Debbie arrived at a Christian organization meeting, where Darrell was playing music, with another guy.
“We had several mutual friends but we never dated. I just knew who she was. And then about six or seven years later …” Darrell says.
By then, both had finished college and were living in Meridian, Miss.
One of Darrell’s friends — not one either of them knew in college — wanted to ask Debbie for a date but couldn’t muster the nerve.
“So we ended up at Pizza Hut one night, the three of us,” Darrell says. “And I thought, ‘This girl is really fun.’ Although I knew her I didn’t know her enough to think, you know, ‘I like this girl.’”
Darrell asked if he could take Debbie to her car, and on the way to her car, he asked another question.
“I said, ‘What are you doing every night this week?’ and she said, ‘I might be seeing you,’” he says.
They went out for dinner not long after.
“It was sort of a destination restaurant so we had plenty of time to talk on the way out there and on the way back,” Darrell says. “It was really good. We wanted some of the same things in life. Our families were different but we had similar backgrounds.”
They quickly became serious about each other. But Darrell played guitar and he was already preparing to leave for Hollywood, Calif.
“I was going out there to study guitar, and I had made up my mind, like, nobody’s going to stop me — it’s my only chance, I’m going,’” says Darrell, who was working in the music ministry at a church.
He told Debbie about his plan one night as they sat in the car, and told her he would get in touch with her when he was back.
“She just kind of said, ‘Well, that’s really not a good plan for me,’” he says. “She let me know that she would consider going with me if the opportunity arose.”
Darrell delayed his trip, and he and Debbie were engaged just two months later after they started dating.
He proposed at a park, asking if she would mind hanging out with him for the next 50 years.
Darrell and Debbie were married on June 20, 1987, in First Baptist Church of Quitman, Miss.
“It was very much us,” Darrell says. “We had some friends play music, which was kind of unusual for the church we got married in. We were both musicians and so we had a tuba, trombone and a couple of trumpets, a flute.”
Their friends from high school and college were in the wedding.
After a honeymoon in Gatlinburg, Tenn., they returned to Meridian to pack up their belongings in preparation for their move to California.
“We got rid of a bunch of stuff and put everything else in the van I had because I was a musician and we headed out West,” he says.
They spent their first year of marriage in California, making new friends with whom they celebrated holidays and special occasions. From there they moved to Atlanta, where Darrell taught guitar and sold stereos and televisions. Then they moved to Pensacola, Fla., where Darrell joined a church music ministry. After a couple more moves, to Georgia and South Carolina, they decided to move to Little Rock to be closer to family.
“Along the way we had two babies,” Debbie says.
Their children, Audra and Jesse, live in Little Rock.
Debbie works at Arkansas Food Bank. Darrell is building services manager at Immanuel Baptist Church.
This time of year, he takes on extra duties.
“I’ve always been a hippie at heart, although I wasn’t quite old enough to be a real hippie,” says Darrell, who began growing his beard long.
About six years ago, Debbie suggested he become Santa. Darrell thought about it for a bit and then started researching how to develop a proper Santa personality. He took a class and ordered a suit, and he dons it for events at Immanuel and various other places throughout the season.
“It’s the most fun I’ve ever had,” he says. “The kids are starstruck — most of them anyway. The neatest thing I learned my first year was that the [senior citizens] love Santa just as much as the kids.”
Debbie does not adopt the role of Mrs. Claus, but she does help Darrell with his suit and with preparations during the holidays.
“I do things like help him get his eyebrows right and clean his suit when he needs help with that,” she says. “He’s a very good Santa. Everyone loves him.”