Constable: Even in death, 'Santa Buck' delivers Christmas memories

The first big family holiday after a loved one dies can be so emotional that survivors sometimes think they glimpse the dead relative among the crowd at a shopping mall. The loved ones of Dick Daberkow of Huntley struggle with that everywhere they look this time of year.

They see Daberkow's red suit, the black boots, the red cap with the white fur trim, the full white beard, the twinkling eyes, the round belly that shook when he laughed like a bowl full of jelly.

“He was Santa,” says Daberkow's father-in-law, Joe Schwartz, of St. Charles.

“He really was Santa,” says Daberkow's mother-in-law, Aida Schwartz.

“He loved being Santa,” says Daberkow's widow, Debbie. “He really did.”

This is the first Christmas season in decades that Daberkow, who died at age 75 of a sudden heart ailment on March 1, isn't donning his gay apparel and decking the halls at a suburban shopping center, stepping off a helicopter in Schaumburg, mingling at a private party, posing for photographs or hoisting children onto his lap at a hospital or charity event.

“I'm not really looking forward to the holidays at all. Just seeing a Santa is very hard,” says Debbie Daberkow. Married for more than 25 years, she used to decorate their Huntley home for Christmas with plenty of reminders of old Saint Nick.

“I guess I did have quite a few Santas. Why not, since he's Santa?” she says with a nod to the memory of her husband, who went by his “Santa Buck” nickname. “I don't think I'm going to decorate this year. I still have my pumpkins up. I think I'll keep them up until spring.”

She met her future husband on the telephone. He was a buyer for Bell Labs in Naperville. She worked in the office of a fastener company in Downers Grove.

“He bought screws from me,” she says with a little chuckle. “He would call me on the phone and just talk and talk and talk.”

A Wisconsin native who came to the suburbs to be a student at North Central College in Naperville, he was 14 years older than his future wife, who grew up in Lombard and lived in Wheaton. They met for lunch before he asked her out in 1985 for dinner and a movie. They saw the fantasy/adventure/love story “Ladyhawke” and got a pizza at Pal Joey's in West Chicago. He bought her ice cream for dessert, but as a “confirmed bachelor,” he didn't want to put too much on the line.

“In case it doesn't work out, I don't want to buy you more than one scoop,” she remembers him joking. He was 49 and she was 35 with a 13-year-old daughter, Michelle, when they married on Aug. 20, 1988.

His salt-and-pepper beard was turning all white and he weighed more than 350 pounds, but he hadn't yet found his Santa persona. That happened after Debbie, a volunteer at the West Suburban Humane Society in Downers Grove, suggested her husband pose for holiday photos with pets.

“They were looking for someone to be Santa,” she says. “I think they had a suit lying around. It just kind of took off from there.”

People in need of a Santa started requesting him.

“He'd put his suit on and say, 'I'm going to work,'” his widow remembers. He had tailors make him two custom suits — one in bright red, and one in a vintage maroon. He was “Santa Buck” and “Uncle Buck” to his nieces Rebecca, Andrea and Nicole.

“Buck was awesome with the kids. He exemplified everything we think of Santa,” says Karen Fleck, who took publicity photographs for “Santa Buck” and used him to pose for photos with children at her Karen Fleck Photography studio in Huntley. “He was kind and gentle and just so happy.”

He will still be “Santa” at Fleck's home this Christmas. “I have a big 16-by-20 photograph of him that I still put above my fireplace every year for Christmas,” Fleck says. “For me, he's Santa.”

Even in the summer in his civilian clothes, Daberkow was Santa.

When he arrived with a truck to pick up a glider his wife bought at a garage sale, a boy who lived there called his friends with the news, “Santa is at my house,” and a crowd of children soon gathered. His wife remembers walking into a restaurant where a tired mom couldn't stop her two rambunctious boys from misbehaving.

“He gave her a wink, and she nodded,” Debbie remembers.

“Do you know who I am?” he asked the boys.

“Santa?” they squeaked.

“Yes, and you need to behave and listen to your mom,” he told them.

Problem solved.

“That happened all the time. We'd walk into Cracker Barrel and kids would say, 'Mom, Dad, it's Santa!'” Debbie Daberkow says.

Her husband got the nickname “Buck” at birth. His dad went hunting and came home without a deer, so he told people that the only buck he got that year was his new son, and the name stuck. Dick Daberkow also was a hunter. And a saver. Once, when cleaning out a freezer, his relatives found a frozen deer head. It's just as well they disposed of it because that sort of thing in Santa's collection could put a scare into Donder and Blitzen.

Dick Daberkow carried two sets of business cards. The one he gave adults featured his name and phone number. The one he gave to kids read, “Be Good Kids! Santa.”

One time, a boy found the adult card and called Daberkow at home. “Santa?” the lad said nervously. Always jolly with children, Daberkow gave the boy his North Pole best.

“He'd refer to himself as 'Santa Buck,' even when he'd order a pizza,” his widow says.

At his wake, Daberkow still looked like Santa, and his red baseball cap reading “Santa” was next to him in the casket. But instead of his familiar red suit, he wore his favorite Green Bay Packers sweatshirt. He was cremated with both, and a little stuffed cat with a heart that read “I Love You.”

“We didn't want to put too many things with Santa because we didn't want children to think that Santa passed away,” his widow says. “I'm going through the process of not quite believing it really happened. It's just hard to get your head wrapped around it.”

For his 3-year-old granddaughter, it's difficult to tell where Daberkow ended and Santa began.

“Olivia will see a photo of him,” Debbie Daberkow says. “Sometimes, she'll say, 'Santa,' and sometimes, she'll say, 'Grandpa.'”

Regardless of the name, the loss hits hard.

“My husband was a wonderful man,” Debbie Daberkow says. “He touched more lives than he realized.”