In December of 2008 this was the cover story. Joe Stankus still plays Santa Claus across the Commonwealth and beyond, and ever year he listens to children’s wishes at Christmas on MacArthur. And his beard is real.
Santa Is Alive and Well and Living in Bellevue
by Charles McGuigan 12.2008
Sometimes, people choose the right heroes or role models and by degrees, through years of emulation, become greater than themselves. Joe Stankus is one such man. From the time he was relatively young he decided to run a business that stressed compassion and fairness toward all employees. It wasn’t a particularly popular notion because profit among many unbridled capitalists has always been the over-riding principle—get as much as you possibly can for as little as you possibly can. But Joe Stankus remained true to core beliefs. He also volunteered his time to organizations committed to helping others. Today, he wears long white hair and sports a full white beard that frames his round face. Wire-rimmed spectacles ride down his nose and he looks, whether in costume or not, just like Saint Nick.
Classic Touch Cleaning occupies two of the largest storefronts on Bellevue Avenue. The windows here are always decked out with decorations, everything from ceremonial masks to alligator skulls, and, of course, during the holidays with a legion of Nutcrackers and other decorations befitting Yuletide. It’s all part of the massive collection owner Joe Stankus has accumulated over the years from yard sales, flea markets, junk shops and estate sales. Both he and his wife and partner in business, Brenda, grew up in Northside. Joe lived on Noble Avenue, moved to East Seminary and settled with Brenda on Princeton. He attended Benedictine, went to college at Notre Dame where he studied government and city management, then returned to Richmond and eventually went to work with Morton G. Thalhimers, where he eventually became president of their janitorial division.
When he first went to work for Thalhimers he oversaw about 100 employees; by the time he left ten years ago to start his own company he managed 700 workers. Those workers cleaned Reynolds Metals, Philip Morris, the James Center, Signet Bank, the Federal Reserve building, to name but a few.
It was during those years that Joe formulated his philosophy of putting people, who couldn’t find jobs at other companies, to work. “Sometimes they might have a physical or mental handicap, sometimes they might have had an incarceration for something minor,” he says. “When the job market’s like it’s been people don’t give anybody a chance. And I wanted to give people a chance. That’s the way I was brought up. One of my purposes here on the earth is to help other people less fortunate than me.”
He mentions one employee named Mark who came to work for Thalhimers when he was about 20 years old. He’d been charged with possession of marijuana and went through a halfway house for treatment. At the time Joe worked closely with two halfway houses for those with drug and alcohol adictions. “Mark went from being an hourly to a highly paid salary employee,” says Joe. “He works out of Las Vegas now with a very major chemical supply company”
In Joe’s eyes everybody deserves a chance to work, and needs to be shown human compassion.
“It was something my parents instilled in me and then Notre Dame instilled in me,” he says.
These days, his business focuses primarily on residential cleaning. “Janitorial got to be basically real cutthroat and the larger clients dictated what you could pay and it’s not what we could consider a fair minimum wage or a fair living wage,” he says. “We could not get that out of some of these contracts, so we turned to residential.
In addition to running the business, alongside his wife, Brenda, Joe puts in about 30 hours a week in community service, notably with the Kiwanis. He is district administrator for one of the Kiwanis major youth-oriented programs—Key Clubs, overseeing some 14,000 high school students from Delaware, Maryland, D.C. and Virginia.
“It’s the largest student run service organization in the world,” he says. “Our best known projects are UNICEF at Halloween and the March of Dimes. Our district this year is working on the Heifer Project to raise money to help stock animals in overseas villages. It’s an international organization and our goal is $20,000.”
Joe’s Key Clubs also raised $17,000 last year to purchase mosquito nets for parts of malaria-plagued Africa. They’re now working on other programs in Africa to deal with the AIDS epidemic there. “The best ways to fight AIDS is through education,” Joe explains. “And we’re doing it through soccer camps. As you know AIDS is rampant in Africa. Young girls will walk several hours to get to camp and while they’re there, they’re given life lessons. The soccer is just to get them there.”
This time of year Joe donates time to the Salvation Army’s Angel Tree program. When it’s time for distribution at their center, he heads up parking and logistics. He’s been doing this for the Salvation Army for the past nine years.
And this time of year he also plays Santa Claus for non-profits, people who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford a visit from Saint Nick. “I do a lot of inner-city schools,” he says. “So far this year I’ve done Birmingham, Alabama; Asheville, North Carolina; and Charleston, West Virginia. Normally they collect gifts and I present them. Each one is different. Like the one in Alabama they’re all mainly seventh graders through high school and they are basically kids that are almost ‘un-adoptable.’”
He also plays Santa to younger children with special needs. And like the man at the North Pole, Joe takes his show around the world. “I’ve been to Bangkok, Malaysia and Singapore playing Santa on goodwill tours,” he tells me. “You pay to fly in there and then tour around. As always we were at orphanages and visiting children with disabilities. I was the only one that had a real beard so my line was hundreds long, and the other Santa’s only had ten people in it.”
Whenever he plays Santa, regardless of the prevailing religious beliefs of the country he is visiting, the response is universal. Santa Claus seems to transcend the narrowness of dogma, seems to be closer to universal spirituality than almost anything else. “I was in Bangkok, it was 80 percent Buddhist and they spoke no English,” says Joe. “In Maylasia it’s 100 percent Muslim and no English. But when the kids would come up their eyes would light up and they would call me Father Christmas.”
He tells a story that happened down in Emporia not long ago. He was visiting a school for children with. One of the girl’s parents told him that their daughter would never come up to him. And then, low and behold, she scrambles into his lap, looks into his eyes, and his gloved hand rests on her small shoulder. “Even her grandparents hadn’t held her at that point,” Joe tells me, adding that Santa Claus is “the personification of good and how little kids know that, I have no idea.”
Next Saturday, Joe will be playing Santa Claus at Christmas on MacArthur Avenue right in Bellevue. It’s an annual event sponsored by local merchants. And it’s a great time for the kids to give Father Christmas their wish lists. They can even tug his beard to see if he’s real or fake, but it’s not going anywhere. Joe Stankus is the genuine article.
Classic Touch Cleaning
1229 Bellevue Avenue
564-5668