Santa Dashes on a '68 Harley to Deliver Gifts to Disabled Children

Santa and Mrs. Claus came riding into Port Jefferson on a classic Harley Davidson motorcycle to deliver presents to children and adults with disabilities at on Sunday. Every year the Antique Motorcycle Club of Long Island takes a list of names and divvies up the responsibility among its 130 members to purchase gifts requested on the list.

“We’ve been doing it for quite a while,” said Don Spence, of Port Jefferson, president of the Long Island chapter of the Antique Motorcycle Club. “It gives the Maryhaven kids a Christmas.”

Spence said that he sends out the list to all the members of the club and they buy the gifts with money out of their own pocket.

“Everybody contributes,” he said. “Whatever they put on the list, they get.”

Maryhaven employees got the event started off by having everyone sing Jingle Bells enticing Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus to join them. The Clauses came in and handed out presents to each of the residents one-by-one.

The Clauses, played by Doug and Karen St. John, of Kings Park, arrived riding their Harley Davidson motorcycle, purchased by Doug when it was brand new back in 1968.

The tradition started 29 years ago when the Long Island Chevy Club started buying gifts for the children at Maryhaven. Eventually the Antique Motorcycle Club joined up with the Chevy Club to help buy the gifts and deliver them.

Back then Butch and Giny Keegan, of Coram, were president and secretary of the club. Although the Chevy club has since dissolved, the Keegans still continue to organize the event every year.

Giny Keegan works in patient accounts at Stony Brook Medical Center and she takes the list to employees at the hospital every year to pick a child and buy a present.

“All of those were in my bedroom,” Keegan said pointing to tables filled with gifts inside the gymnasium.

Keegan said that many of the people at Maryhaven come to the facility as babies and have nowhere else to go.

“Some have parents but more have no parents,” she said.

Over time she said that she has watched many of the kids come and go through the almost three decades she has been involved with the event. It’s something she does because many of the kids there are able to get a Christmas they might otherwise not have.

“It feels good,” she said. “If I didn’t enjoy it, I wouldn’t go through all of this.”