The staff at William R. Sharp Jr. Hospital turned the Santa hat on Sylvia Chico that snowy December day back in 2016.
She twinkled like the tree at Rockefeller Center when she realized.
“Are you serious? I never saw it coming.”
Chico, 87, of Morgantown, died last week. Calling hours continue from 4-8 p.m. today at St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in Star City, where the Mass of Christian Burial will be 11 a.m. Wednesday, with the Rev. Patsy Iaquinta and the Rev. William Matheny celebrating.
To many in Morgantown and across north-central West Virginia, Chico was a celebration, unto herself, of Christmas spirit and Yuletide cheer.
That’s because of her endeavor dubbed, “Operation Santa Claus.”
Here’s how it worked: Every year, she would enlist like-minded volunteers and area businesses to gather Christmas presents — wrapped with all the bows, shiny paper and other trimmings bespeaking of visits from Santa, long passed.
In the way of Mr. Claus and his reindeer, a caravan, which always included at least one Monongalia County sheriff’s cruiser, would form and motor down Interstate 79 from Morgantown to Weston, Lewis County, in a hour-long jaunt.
The destination for years was the former Weston State Hospital, an imposing, fortress-like psychiatric facility that commanded several blocks downtown. The chrome-and-glass Sharpe hospital replaced it in 1994.
Operation Santa Claus came about because of a sad occurrence in Chico’s family nearly 60 years ago.
A relative suffered brain trauma in a car crash in 1965 and he was shuttled off to the old Weston facility — because there were simply none in Morgantown at the time to care for him.
Chico paid him a holiday visit for Christmas that year, and couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Just like Santa shimmying down the chimney, the Morgantown woman went back the next year. She brought her relative a gift, but with other patients there, that didn’t seem quite right.
So, she went back the following year, with more gifts. And the next year after that, as well.
And she started telling her friends, who started telling their friends, and everybody started shopping and wrapping — and before you knew it, you had a new tradition for the holiday.
The way former Mon County Sheriff Al Kisner remembers it, he’d turn the page to December on his desk calendar, and not long after, his phone would start ringing.
He wouldn’t even say hello — “It was always, ‘When are we going?’ ‘What time do we need to be there?’”
‘This is my Christmas’
Back to that 2016 visit: Sharpe’s patients — or, “clients,” as the hospital prefers to call them — gathered that afternoon in an auditorium and dayroom area.
Mr. Claus, himself, worked the room, while a three-piece band kicked out the jams on “Jingle Bells” and “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”
When Chico walked in, hospital employee Krista Adkins, who helped plan the day’s proceedings, gave her a broad, “I-know-something-you-don’t-know” smile.
A few minutes in, hospital officials commanded the microphone and presented her with an engraved clock and a certificate of appreciation — for a Lifetime Achievement of making spirits bright, in a place where that doesn’t always happen.
“I want you to write down what a great job I did keeping a secret,” Adkins said. “I was on the phone with Sylvia all week.”
The recipient shook her head and smiled.
“This is my Christmas,” she said, gesturing around the room. “Right here.”
TWEET @DominionPostWV
