Originally when he restored the sleigh, painting it a new holiday shade of red, he was going to don the Santa suit himself and deliver a sleigh-full of goodies to a few deserving families needing some extra holiday cheer this year.
But Matt Young’s idea soon drew unanticipated help from his girlfriend, Terina Reno, friends Erica McIver and Marcia Auriemma, and others.
Steve Marois, who produces “Ridin’ Steel,” a television show featuring motorcycle rides for charity causes, utilized his contacts to help find three families who were in need of some help this Christmas. Marois said he is not only proud of the people who organized this event, but of all the people who bought presents at a time when everyone is struggling financially, “and to see people do what they can to help anybody, in our local community, is very inspiring.”
Young, who owns Young’s Body and Bikes in Topsham where he does everything from fixing motorcycles to restoring old muscle cars, said he worked on the sleigh for about three months, then took a trip to the police station and then the Bureau of Motor Vehicles trying to discern how to register the sleigh, which is mounted on a trailer cut to size.
On Christmas Eve, he’ll be seated in the sleigh as Santa Claus while Reno will play the part of Mrs. Claus. He also has three elves, all of them at least 300 pounds, he said. One will ride a motorcycle in front of the sleigh, one will ride the three-wheel Harley-Davidson pulling the sleigh, and the third will follow behind on a motorcycle.
Santa and his elves made a trip last Sunday to Bath to deliver a holiday surprise to a single mother and her son. Afterward, as they pulled over near Morse High School, two little girls ran toward him yelling “Santa! Santa!” He asked the girls their names and if they’d been good, with one girl responding, “Well, I think so.”
The man chaperoning the girls asked them as they departed, “Did you see the size of that elf ?”
Although the group originally planned to help three families, Young said they were able to help additional families due to the outpouring of support.
One of the families who will be await- ing Santa on Christmas Eve are the Halls in Topsham. Joseph Hall married Ashley on New Year’s Day in 2010. The couple have a 4-year-old daughter, Sera Raye, and a 3- month-old baby girl, Brenna Imogen. Hall also has a 7- year-old son, Alaric, living in Texas and who this month is working on being in remission from kidney cancer for two years.
It’s been a trying time for Hall, who at 30, is a veteran. He spent most of his life in the Texas Panhandle near Tulia and joined the Army in September 1998. He began his military career as an infantry sniper and then cross trained over into explosive ordinance disposal (EOD).
All those nasty IEDs people hear about on the news, “that was my job to take apart,” Hall said. “I actually put on a bomb suit and walked down on top of it and took it apart.”
He went to EOD school where the attrition rate was 92 percent, yet he graduated No. 2 in a class of only 13 remaining of the 200 people originally in the class. Next he was selected to complete nuclear, biological and chemical training. He went to Afghanistan for 24 months with a unit out of Fort Knox, Ky., returned stateside for nearly five months, and then went to Iraq for the invasion with a unit out of Fort Sill, Okla.
“My unit had about a 97-percent efficiency rate,” Hall said. “I got hit twice in a row. One went off when I was about 100 meters from it.” Though the bomb suit he wore absorbed most of the damage, it did knocked him out.
“The second that got me, I was right on top of it,” Hall said. Again, the bomb suit he wore absorbed most of the damage, but he suffered a number of injuries as a result. This happened in February 2004. He was shipped back to the U.S. after that, and in December 2004 he left the military.
Hall said he is currently 90- percent service connected through the Department of Veterans Affairs. He has been diagnosed with “one of the best cases of PTSD Togus has ever seen.” The Boston Red Sox Foundation’s Home Base program will be looking to see if he has a traumatic brain injury, which may be related to the PTSD.
Meanwhile, he has been waiting more than 10 months while the VA processes his claim, possibly for full disability. With a newborn, his wife is home taking care of the baby and is serving as his caregiver, so the family is living on a very tight budget.
“All I’ve been told is Santa, a couple of elves and a sleigh are going to be showing up” on Christmas Eve, Hall said, who was put on Young’s radar screen through Wounded Heroes and Pam Payeur. “ They have adopted us for Christmas. Basically, we were told not to buy any Christmas presents for anybody in the family, that they were taking care of everything. We got a Christmas tree from Wounded Heroes.”
It’s a frustrating situation he finds himself in, Hall said. From 2005 to 2009, he tried to live without ever filing a claim. Due to the PTSD, the young man who would once go anywhere and talk to anyone, doesn’t go into public much because he finds it hard to trust people.
“It’s not an easy thing to look at somebody and say, ‘I need help,’” Hall said. “For most of my life, people have looked at me and said, ‘you can’t do this or that,’ and I’ve proved them wrong. You kind of lose your sense of independence. But at the same time, you’re thankful for the help you get.”
Without Young and the group of people who have stepped up to help his family, “I don’t think we’d have had a Christmas” this year, Hall said.
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