Tenn. Man Hears All as Dulles Town Center Santa

By Scott Den Herder

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Thousands of Loudoun residents have met Rip Mann, but not many of them know him by that name. To them, he's simply Santa.

For the past eight years he's spent the holiday season working at Dulles Town Center in Sterling, taking an unknown number of requests, mostly for toys, but sometimes on rare occasions, someone will ask for a Christmas miracle.

Over the years he's been asked to do everything from save marriages to cure cancer. Although he can't perform miracles, he instead focuses on his ability to give people hope.

Some of his most emotional visits have been from children with severe illnesses. For those kids, he has a special gift. He keeps a stained-glass necklace of an angel around his neck. It's intended to protect them through their sickness.

“When I have a child who comes up and I know is very, very sick, I present them with one of my guardian angels,” he said.

A child once asked Santa to help cure his dad of cancer. Mann reached for one of his angels.

“I told him like I always do to kids: 'Santa's not a magician. He can't do that. All I can do is pray for you and your family.'”

The next year the child came back with tears in his eyes. The boy had hung the angel above his father's bed and the cancer was gone, Mann said.

“It's not anything to do with the angles. It's just good modern science, medical treatment and positive thinking,” he said.

In a small room that he uses as a dressing room, tucked away down a service corridor inside the mall, he shuffled though numerous letters asking for gifts and pulled out a few thanking him for his support and prayers during their illnesses.

As he began to read a letter about a girl with cancer, he struggled to keep from crying. She had come to see him last year and her family had written him a thank-you letter. This year, she didn't return.

“I've got to call and find out why we didn't get to see her,” he said. “That's a sad thing to have to do because she may not have made it.”

Mann, 69, comes to Loudoun not from the North Pole, but rather from Copperhill, Tenn. His sleigh is a car. His beard is real. He's had it for the past 30 years. His Santa costume consists of black, custom boots embroidered with Christmas motifs. They're also covered with stag-horn buttons, but he prefers to tell kids they're made from reindeer antlers.

In Tennessee, he owns a gift shop with his wife, Tammi. They make hand-hewn wooden bowls and have published two books on the subject. The shop provides him with enough money to make a living, but working as Santa in Loudoun has become a special part of his life.

Even though his father had worked as a Santa, it wasn't until the early 1990s that Mann decided to follow in his footsteps. A friend suggested that his “Santa beard” would make him a perfect candidate for a mall Santa position he knew about in Virginia. He decided to take the job and soon began working at Tysons Galleria -- where he worked for seven seasons -- nearly 600 miles from home.

It wasn't long before he fell in love with his new occupation. Mann, a devout Christian, now says he believes the job was God's plan for him to make a difference in people's lives, working as Santa to do something good for kids and their families.

Jason Braman, 25, has worked with him for the past two years at Dulles Town Center. He says Mann has not only made a difference in the lives of other people but also his, as well. Last year, Braman wanted to get his girlfriend an engagement ring but couldn't afford it. Mann gave him a ring on Christmas Eve in 2006.

“This is who he is. It's not just a job for him. I've seen so many families that drive up from places like North Carolina. They've moved out of the area. They come back up here to see him because it's the same guy every year," Braman said. "Everyone comes here because they think he's the real deal."

Although Tysons Galleria and Dulles Town Center are upscale malls located in two of the wealthiest counties in the country -- where the median household is about $98,000, according to census data released last year -- there still are impoverished families that come to visit Santa, Mann said.

One day, a girl and her mom came to see him. The girl asked Santa for a home because they were living in her mom's car, he said.

“I sat there like any Santa would and the tears flowed,” he said.

A few years ago, an elementary school from the District brought several children to Tysons Galleria. Mann said one of the children asked him for a raincoat.

“She said she never owned one and had to walk to school in the rain,” he said. “That just tears your heart out. And you get all kinds of things like that.”

A few people have asked him to get in touch with relatives who have passed away.

One man brought his two boys with him. After they finished talking to Santa, he let them walk down the ramp before asking Santa to save his marriage.

“Sometimes it's like being a bartender,” he said.

He tries to encourage siblings not to fight with each other - at least until after Christmas. He also makes an attempt to ease the stress on parents, too. Kids sometimes bring him long lists of toys they want for Christmas. One child even brought his list on a laptop computer. Mann says he often tells children with long Christmas lists that even Jesus only received three gifts.

He gets a lot of requests for animals, particularly cats, dogs and horses.

“My standard answer is very simple. I say, 'You do realize that a dog would freeze in the sleigh because it's very cold up there.' And they will generally say, 'Oh, I didn't think about that.'”

“The first dog I tried it with froze, and that was the beginning of frozen pupsicles,” he says jokingly. “The parents love that one.”

Although most of his visitors are children, a few people are on the other end of life's spectrum. A few days ago. a 90-year-old woman brought to the mall by her family came to see Santa.

“They brought her up and said she had never sat with Santa in her life, and she was just thrilled,” he said.

Mann says he has no plans to retire anytime soon. Eventually he will no longer make the journey to Virginia, but plans to continue working as a Santa from his store in Tennessee.

“I think every Santa who sits in a chair like I am this year for 38 days, I think they're all incredible. Whether they have a real beard or a fake beard. It's hard to sit there. I was in the Marine Corps and it's about like boot camp,” he said. “Those are my stories. I have dozens of them. I assume every Santa does.”

Tagged: christmas

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