George Weinfurtner Veteran, played Santa to the hilt

LITTLE ROCK — Like others in his family, George Weinfurtner always enjoyed being around children.

Unfortunately, the broad shouldered, 6-foot former Army sergeant sometimes scared them away with his “gruff voice,” his daughter Annette Perusich said.

So, when the longtime Pine Bluff resident learned that by growing his hair out he looked like Santa Claus, which made children more comfortable, he was thrilled, she said.

Weinfurtner, who since the mid-1990s had played Santa in local stores, parades, schools and churches, died Sunday from congestive heart disease at Jefferson Regional Medical Center in Pine Bluff.

He was 70.

Even when he wasn’t wearing the suit for one of his “Santa gigs,” it didn’t take much to imagine Weinfurtner as the North Pole’s most famous denizen, relatives said.

“If it was November or December, he did all he could to look like Santa Claus,” said Tina Harmon, one of his four children.

He sometimes sported suspenders imprinted with candy-cane images, a tie with a holly motif, red pants, a red or white shirt and red felt hat. “He looked like St. Nick off work,” she said.

In stores, she recalled people strolling by with small children seated in buggies. “They would just be sitting there with their mouths open, just watching.”

“Daddy would make sure he spoke to all of them, all the time. ... He’d say ‘I’m watching you. You behave now.’”

Occasionally, however, the outgoing Weinfurtner neglected to take his own advice.

Perusich recalled a trip to a local Radio Shack in which her father approached two pregnant women. “He would flirt with anybody,” she recalled. “It didn’t matter what color they were or what shape they were.”

To the first pregnant woman, he said: “I know what you’ve been doing,” she recalled. Then he walked to the second, put his hand on her belly and said the same thing. She was not pleased.

Perusich recalled, “I told him, ‘Daddy in this day and age you do not lay your hands on people you don’t know.’” Born Nov. 1, 1939, in Omaha, Neb., Weinfurtner, the fourth of 13 children, grew up in a family in which his father died early on and the family fragmented afterward, Harmon said. From about age 10 until his high school graduation, Weinfurtner lived in a local Boys Town, then a home for troubled and orphaned boys, she said.

Afterward, he started a 22-year career in the U.S. Army that took him to places like Germany, Vietnam and Denver, where he married Judith Bigalk in 1962. His wife died in 2003, Harmon said.

Weinfurtner served at the Pine Bluff Arsenal after moving to the area in the early 1970s.

Although he later worked as a clerk for the Arkansas prison system and as a Wal-Mart greeter, Weinfurtner was best known as the local Santa Claus.

He dressed up for an annual Christmas party thrown by the local Red Cross, recalled Donna Booth-Johnson, director of the Red Cross’ southeast Arkansas chapter.

Without the suit, he traveled to New Iberia, La., in 1992 to hand out food and cleaning supplies to those devastated by Hurricane Andrew. He also spent more than three weeks feeding New York’s hungry after Sept. 11, 2001. Around Arkansas, he ran numerous shelters and fed and clothed those with lives wrecked by floods, ice storms and tornadoes. Also, he helped run a free Red Cross program that connected military personnel serving abroad with their families in emergency situations, Booth-Johnson said.

In all, Weinfurtner gave 22 years to the Red Cross, she said.

“He was the perfect Santa.”