He started out dyeing his beard white during the holiday season, but after three years, he decided to keep the white beard full time. He doesn’t wear red and white every day, though. Just most days.

“Probably 345 days a year,” he said. “But I’m still Santa Claus all those others.”

McKenzie puts his heart into being Santa Claus — but four years ago, he was in need of a new one. He needed a heart transplant.

McKenzie has Type 2 diabetes. He had dealt with heart problems for years, but by 2018, his condition had escalated to end-stage heart failure.

Doctors at Memorial Hermann managed to find him a new heart, with the transplant taking place that fall. He returned home in time for Christmas the same year.

Since that time, McKenzie has dealt with more health problems in the form of three broken hips, and he experienced tragedy when his Mrs. Claus — his wife, Deborah — died of a fall last year. His frequent trips to the hospital, plus the COVID-19 pandemic, kept him from the job he loves.  

But this year, Santa is back. Doctors say his heart remains strong four years after his transplant, and he’s regained his strength. He’s once again bringing joy to Texas children as Santa.

“It’s a rebirth of a kind,” McKenzie said. “My light was almost blown out, but I’ve got it back now. And it’s going to burn forever.”

Becoming Santa

Growing up in Houston, McKenzie always liked Christmas. He grew to love it when his own daughter was about 10 years old. He took her to meet Santa at a mall and was appalled to find that the man playing him was grumpy and wouldn’t talk to the children.

He chastised the manager, who asked him whether he could do better.  McKenzie returned that weekend as Santa. He’s been doing it ever since.

“When you put on this suit, you just get a chill in your body,” he said. “Everybody smiles when they see you.”

McKenzie’s day jobs have included working at a Chevrolet dealership, working in real estate and owning a bar, but Santa is his obsession. He admits that his wife wasn’t as enthusiastic at the beginning, but she eventually caught the Christmas spirit.

Over the years they collected ornaments and knickknacks galore. He even has a separate storage unit where he keeps some of the larger items — including sleighs that he rents to others.

Of all his treasures, McKenzie’s favorite is the Santa Claus wreath perched on his front door. “He just looks the way a Santa should look,” he explained. “He’s so jolly.”

Most of all, he learned how to connect with kids, no matter how they were feeling. He loves to sing — his favorite song is “Christmas Everyday” by Kenny Rogers — and make them smile.

One time, he noticed a little boy wouldn’t smile or take any pictures. The boy’s parents said it was because he had a prosthetic leg. McKenzie asked the parents for a moment alone with the boy.

By then, McKenzie’s diabetes had progressed to the point where the lower part of his right leg had to be amputated. He rolled up his pant leg and showed the boy that Santa had a prosthetic, too. The boy’s eye’s lit up, he said.

“He started smiling and laughing,” McKenzie remembered. “We had such a great time.”

Santa needs a new heart

McKenzie’s health troubles began when he was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in his early 40s. He is 6-foot-1, and before his heart transplant, his weight reached a high near 300 pounds. But he didn’t make any lifestyle changes to keep his diabetes in check.

“I didn’t think the diabetes meant anything because I didn’t ever have anything wrong,” he said. “I didn’t have any highs and I didn’t have any lows.”

Looking back, he wishes he would have taken his health more seriously. In addition to the leg amputation, he dealt with balance problems that caused him to fall, tremors and orthostatic hypotension, which causes blood pressure to drop quickly after standing up.

McKenzie also developed heart problems. He had multiple heart attacks over the years and had 16 stents inserted to improve blood flow. And he needed a pair of coronary artery bypass surgeries, in 2004 and 2017.

By 2018, he was being seen at the Center for Advanced Heart Failure at Memorial Hermann’s Heart & Vascular Institute. He was in end-stage heart failure, and doctors told him there was nothing else they could do.

“My wife and I planned my funeral,” he said.

But a team of Memorial Hermann cardiologists who specialize in heart failure provided a lifeline. McKenzie was around 305 pounds at the time, so he wasn’t a candidate for a heart transplant right away. Doctors instead inserted a left ventricular assist device, or LVAD, to help his heart pump blood, said Dr. Sriram Nathan, a transplant cardiologist at UTHealth Houston and Memorial Hermann’s HVI.

McKenzie then underwent a gastric sleeve surgery, where part of the stomach is removed to restrict food intake.

“He had a tremendous weight loss of more than 50 pounds, to the point where he was eligible for transplantation,” Nathan said.

By fall 2018, McKenzie met the criteria to be added to the transplant list. He was listed as high priority because the LVAD was beginning to cause electrical disturbances in his heart, Nathan said.

“The only possibility of him doing better would have been the transplant, because we could not take the heart pump out,” Nathan said.

Fortunately, the new heart came three days after McKenzie was officially added to the transplant list. The surgery took place Oct. 21, 2018.

Doctors promised he’d recover in time to be discharged before Christmas. In the operating room before the surgery, McKenzie said he wanted to sing a song, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”

“We were all crying by the end,” he said.

The Memorial Hermann team kept the promise. McKenzie returned home one week before Christmas.

Santa’s recovery

McKenzie continued to lose weight after his transplant and is now down to 169 pounds, but he continued to have health problems of a different kind. About a year after he returned home, he fell on the sidewalk and broke his left hip. He recovered and returned home, but he fell and broke his right hip the same day.

He was still recovering in the hospital when his wife, Deborah, died Sept. 26, 2021, after being injured in a fall. She was 70.

On the morning of her funeral, McKenzie fell a third time and broke his right hip again. But he refused to miss the service. Three friends carried him to a truck and drove to the funeral so he could say goodbye to his wife. They took him to the hospital afterward.

“I celebrate her every day,” McKenzie said. “She gave me life, and she gave everyone she came into contact with life.”

Those hospitalizations and COVID-19 kept McKenzie away from being Santa over the past three years, aside from a few appearances. He said it was “heartbreaking” when he couldn’t do what he loves.

This year, though, he’s back. Through his company, Texas Real Santa, he oversees a team of 33 other Father Christmases who make appearances at schools, company parties and other events. He estimates they’ll do 200 events this year and that he’ll make 40 appearances.

Ten days before Christmas, he was meeting children at TIRR Memorial Hermann-The Woodlands. Most of the children were happy to see him, and he had the rest smiling by the time they left. He gave all of them high-fives and fist bumps, and he reminded them to leave out milk and cookies on Christmas Eve.

He got a visit from some longtime friends, too. Krystal and Daryl Gannon have been taking their children— first 13-year-old Sadie, then 10-year-old Millie — to see McKenzie for 12 years. Each year The Woodlands family finds out where McKenzie will be appearing so they can visit him.

“I will not trust, go near, or speak with any other Santa,” Sadie said. “He’s funny, he’s sweet, and I’ve just been around him so much that he feels like my grandfather.”

The Gannons were sad to go without seeing McKenzie when he had his heart transplant. They’re thrilled he’s back.

“The magic of Christmas is not the same without him,” Krystal Gannon said.

 

evan.macdonald@chron.com