I first met long-time Wesley Chapel resident Paul Bartell about a dozen years ago, when he was the volunteer event chair for the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life. My wife Jannah, who I had only met the previous year at the same event, was the Cancer Society’s staff community representative running the show at that Relay.
It was a hot day and Paul had been there the entire day, his face beet red from working in the sun. And, even though I didn’t know he also had been dressing up as Santa Claus for kids and events throughout the Tampa Bay area for many years, I remember that I definitely thought he looked a little like Ol’ St. Nick himself.
I also didn’t know back then that Paul and his wife Jamie had two sons — James and Sean — or that Sean would pass away (at age 16) only a couple of years after I met Paul, from a rare skin and blood disorder known as Stevens-Johnson Syndrome (or SJS).
With his ruddy complexion and pleasant demeanor, Paul was seemingly born to portray Santa. In fact, he has been playing the jolly man for 30 years, the last 22 in and around the Wesley Chapel area. He clearly delights in the role and has continued to make dozens of appearances as St. Nick each year, even in the difficult years since Sean passed away.
In fact, Paul says, it was Christmas Day in 2014 when Sean, who was then covered in the blisters and lesions associated with SJS (which starts with flu-like symptoms and is usually caused by a severe adverse reaction to certain medications and needs to be treated immediately at an emergency room when the symptoms first manifest) was no longer the promising young man who was fifth in his graduating class at Wesley Chapel High (WCH). “He was in so much pain and there was nothing Jamie and I could do to help him,” Paul recalls. “It was such a terrible, helpless feeling.”
And, although SJS is only fatal in about 7.5% of cases, Sean lost his battle on New Year’s Eve that same year. But, his devastated parents could only think of how much Sean loved school and how much they wanted to something positive to come out of their family’s tragedy.
Enter: The Foundation
“There’s no doubt that education was always Sean’s focus,” Paul says. “He was planning to study biology at Vanderbilt University.” According to the website for the Sean Bartell Memorial Foundation (SeanBartell.org), which the Bartells started in 2015, the family’s church, Atonement Lutheran on S.R. 54, came to them wanting to start a scholarship in Sean’s name, which is how the idea got started.
That first year (2015), the Foundation gave its first $1,000 scholarship/grant to then-WCH senior Meghan Sanchez. Today, the Foundation has awarded $74,000 to students and more than $10,000 more to teachers at Wesley Chapel, Wiregrass Ranch, Cypress Creek and Zephyrhills high schools (and this year, Kirkland Ranch Academy of Innovation will be added to that list), to assist them with furthering their respective educations.
Each year, based on the amount of money the Foundation is able to raise, a gala has been held at Atonement Lutheran where the scholarships have been awarded. The Foundation has hosted events like a Quarter Auction and Charity Bingo nights to help raise additional funds, but Paul says he still always wanted to do more.
“I have had so many experiences as Santa, why not write a book?,” he says. “I’m not really a big TV watcher and I like to read. I had read probably half a dozen books about being Santa and I said to myself, ‘Why can’t I write a book? I’ve been doing it long enough and I’ve got a story to tell.’ And I figured I would donate any proceeds from the book sales to the Foundation.”
Paul says that it took him four or five months to write the book. “Because I’m Santa all through November and December every year, January and February are my ‘down’ times when I’m basically a couch potato.” He adds that he wrote the entire book on his iPhone.
“I just looked back at all of the pictures in my phone that people had sent me and that became my timeline to tell the story,” he says. “I basically went backwards on the timeline and I wrote down what I remembered about each picture.”
He then tweaked it a few times and added pictures at the end of the book and he was ready to publish. He uploaded the pages to Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) platform and, “It was easy,” he says. “You don’t even have to buy any copies. You pick your own sales price, between $10 and $200. So, we picked $19.98, because that was the year Sean was born. I ordered a few author’s copies and it went live on Amazon on July 1 of this year.” The book is available in both hardcover and Kindle versions and the Foundation retains 60% of the proceeds after the initial per-book charge of $8.06.
Paul also says that the full story of what happened to Sean is one of the book’s chapters.
And, in the meantime, “Santa Paul” is in the middle of his busy season. After making 123 appearances as Santa last year, he had been through about two dozen of his 128 scheduled appearances this year, which includes the Rotary Club of Wesley Chapel’s “Breakfast with Santa” at Bubba’s 33 on Saturday, December 14.
And yes, Paul still also works full-time in the sales department of a company that sells pumps for vacuums used in manufacturing and laboratories. He also wanted to make sure I mentioned how hard Jamie, his wife of 36 years, has always worked behind the scenes for the Foundation and how much he appreciates all of her efforts.
Unfortunately, this year’s Charity Bingo event for the Foundation was postponed due to Hurricane Milton. It has been rescheduled for Saturday, January 25, but without a location because Atonement Lutheran was badly damaged by the storm.
If you or someone you know has a location that could host that event, visit SeanBartell.org. To order your copy of Santa: An Angel Dad, visit Amazon.com.
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