WORDS & PICTURES: Gabrielle Versmessen
Most people would be surprised to learn that Santa Claus lives in Bradenton, Florida, but chances are if you’ve attended Elementary school in Manatee County in the last 30 years, you’ve met Steve Hensell, or “Santa Steve,” as he’s better known.
Steve worked as a painter and then as a master mechanic for the Manatee County School District for over 30 years. In 1990, he went to the school board looking for a job, and Gene Witt told him he could have whatever position he wanted so long as Steve would be his Santa.
Even though he’s retired from the school district now, he still dresses up as Santa each year for them. On average, Steve goes to about 20 schools a year and once had 34 schools on his roster! Although he’d be dressed in an all-white painter’s jumpsuit, Steve says that since 2005, he wasn’t able to paint an elementary school without a kid saying, “Santa’s here!”
Steve beams: “What makes me come back year after year is when you’re sitting on that chair, and the kids come in the room, and they gasp, their eyes get huge, and their faces just light up.”
He first dressed up as Santa during his time in the Air Force. They could not find someone on his military base in Germany to be Santa, so they asked Steve if he would do it, to which he wholeheartedly agreed.
Steve considers himself a giver and has always loved Christmas and children and says he couldn’t wait to have his own kids one day so he could share that love with them. He credits his parents and upbringing for his love of the season. Steve’s mother had even made him a “naughty or nice” book to use when he dons the red coat.
Steve and his wife, Wendy, have three biological children and have adopted two after fostering 50 kids in the past 25 years. They now have four grandchildren. Their daughter is due with the fifth, coincidentally in December.
However, this past year and a half has presented its fair share of challenges for Steve. In June 2021, his daughter brought her car to his house with two flat tires caused by nails. He plugged the holes, stood up, got light-headed, and had to sit back down. He asked his daughter to get him a couple of aspirin and a glass of water. After an hour, he asked her to take him to the hospital because the chest pain was unbearable. Steve compares the feeling to that of someone standing on his chest.
The ER took him in immediately, did a catheter procedure, and found that he would need a triple bypass because his aortic valve was 95% closed. He was having the widow maker heart attack.
Doctors used nitroglycerin pills to open up the blood vessels to get him through the next few weeks until they could operate on August 24th. After surgery, the doctor told him the procedure they did to replace the aortic valve in his heart along with the triple bypass would get him to 80 years old but that his heart was still severely damaged.
Steve’s response: “Well, 80 would be great! That’s 14 more years!”
Then, just a few months later, Steve sat in his recliner after coming home from the North Pole Express in Parrish and took off his boots and socks when his wife said: “Your pinky toe is black!”
Steve turned on the light from his tableside lamp and, after taking one look at it, knew he had to call his podiatrist with Veteran Affairs. He described what he was seeing to the doctor and was told to immediately get to the VA’s medical center in Bay Pines.
Somehow, a tiny blister underneath his foot had contracted gangrene. They gave him two hours to live and told him they could either cut off the foot to save the leg or cut off the leg to save his life. Now, Steve was having to recover from a life-altering amputation after just recovering from the heart attack, and it didn’t end there.
Steve came home from the hospital on January 4th, and the very next morning, he had to call 911. His left arm was completely stiff. “Frozen, like a block of ice,” he describes it. The EMS workers thought he was having a stroke, but it turns out he had a 10mm blood clot in his arm. The doctors told him that 99% of the time, blood clots go straight to the brain first.
Before removing the clot, Steve’s doctor, Dr. Shastri, wanted to make sure he knew that there is always a chance of not coming out of surgery alive. Steve says: “I looked him dead in the eyes and said, ‘Listen, all you have to do is worry about doing your job. If God wants me, He’s going to take me whether you’re on top of me or not.’ And he was shocked.”
Steve’s can-do attitude was an essential asset in his recovery. In March, the VA came to his house to build a ramp in his backyard. He put his cane and walker aside, and after four days, he learned how to walk up and down the ramp without assistance.
Four months later, he was sent to physical therapy, where they could not believe how advanced and strong he was. It didn’t take long for the therapists there to clear Steve.
Steve says: “Well, I wasn’t going to wait around for someone to tell me it’s time to walk.”
But don’t worry! None of these health obstacles are stopping Steve from being Santa this year. He’s used to kids staring at him, thinking he’s Santa Claus anyway. While his coat is typically long enough to cover the prosthetic, he’s not worried about a child seeing it or asking questions.
“Kids are smarter than people give them credit for, and they’re pretty resilient. A little girl asked me what happened to my leg when I was visiting my wife at Prine Elementary. I told her gangrene got in my leg, how it got in there, and that they had to take my foot, or I’d be dead. And that was it!”
Steve’s grandchildren were in shock after it happened, though. He joked with them to just call him “Papa Kickstand.”
Although Steve can stand up fine, he might not be getting up and moving around the room like he was before. Even at that, he doesn’t foresee any major issues getting in the way of his visits to the schools or the North Pole Express this year.
“Whatever comes, I’m going to meet the challenge. It may take me one or two times to get it, but I’ll get it. It’s who I am.”
