Yes, Virginia, There Was A Santa Claus.

Dear Editor,

I’m eight years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in The Freedonia Times, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth: Is there a Santa Claus?

Virginia O’Hanlon

Yes, Virginia, there was a Santa Claus. His name was Guy Bastardi and he was murdered by a drunk driver two weeks ago. Diane Schuler, 36, had been careening the wrong way down the Taconic Parkway for two miles when she slammed head-on into Guy’s car at high speed. The police found blood in her alcohol and an empty half-gallon of vodka in her car. There was more pot smoke in her lungs than at a fraternity party. Guy Bastardi was forty-nine and didn’t look like Saint Nick, but was so generous and warm-spirited, so nice to everyone that even strangers called him, "Santa Claus." But wait, she not only killed a man of legendary sweetness, she dispatched his father, Michael Bastardi, 81, and Daniel Longo, a family friend, as well. They were on their way to a weekly pasta dinner with the rest of the Bastardi clan when Diane Schuler drove a van full of children into them. Yes, Schuler wasn't alone as she drank and toked herself into oblivion. She was returning from a camping trip with her two-year-old daughter, five-year-old son and three nieces, all under the age of ten. The only survivor was Schuler’s son, who went to the hospital. Four adults and four children went to the morgue. Diane Schuler will never face justice because she was one of them. But what about Santa? Not the man, the idea. Did he survive the crash? Yes, Virginia, because, as Frederick Church wrote in his famous New York Sun editorial of 1897, “. . . he lives as long as love and generosity and devotion exist.”

The Editor