Like many stores on the eve of the Holidays - the big retail season for them - the Sears store in Jackson is getting ready for customers. Lots of them.

The delivery trucks have been beating a path to the side door, and last-minute details have been checked and double checked.

Inside J. T. Bell’s small office, there’s a box with a bright red suit inside. Bell takes out the hat and within seconds, a familiar figure comes alive. The costume contains no fake beard, because Bell supplies that with his own white whiskers.

“I always wanted to be the character Tim Allen played in the movie, ‘The Santa Clause’, said Bell, who’s the owner and manager of the Sears store. “When the Jackson Woman’s Club started all this, they wanted the Kiwanis Club of Jackson to to something as well. Well, I love kids, and I could grow a beard pretty fast. But when you get older, you begin to feel more vulnerable in life, and you want to to something so people could remember you by.”

From that point earlier this decade, J. T. Bell has been Santa Claus. As he will be again on Saturday, December 1st, as another celebration of “A Downtown Christmas” makes the city come alive with the wonderful sights and sounds of the season.

“I had played Santa Claus before, just for my kids,” said Bell, who’s a Kiwanis Club member, “and once, when my oldest daughter was three years old, I dressed up as Santa. I put her gift - a hobby horse - under the tree, and my wife took a picture of me and the hobby horse under that tree.”

Bell added he wanted to give his daughter the full effect of Santa delivering the goods, and it worked. “My kids still believe in Santa Claus. That’s because Santa Claus is in everybody’s heart, which is why we enjoy it so much. To give and share. So I played Santa on a big scale after that.”

It works. Because of Bell’s believability in the role of the “Ho-Ho Man”, the Woman’s Club told others “there’s only one Santa Claus, and he’s our exclusive Santa.”

A Virginia native, Bell grew up in what locals called the state’s “Southside”, in the city of Martinsville. While in high school, he rembembers the loud roar of stock cars practicing and running at the Martinsville Speedway, just a hill over from the school. “Yeah, we could hear ‘em from the school, and it was loud. Very loud.” Because of the high volume of noice, Bell admits he’s not a NASCAR fan, but “he always rooted for the Chevys.”

He would work for Winn-Dixie, and in time would move across the border to North Carolina, where Bell was an Assistant Manager at one of their stores in Greensboro. “I learned how to operate and run the meat department, the produce department, and grocery department. I learned it all.”

Divorced from a previous marriage, Bell began chatting with a local woman, Lexene Turner, the daughter of two retired Breathitt County teachers, Herbert and Dorothy Turner. Two years later, J. T. told Lexene, “I might consider marrying you if I could find a job. She said, ‘Jobs are tough to find in Jackson, but they’re looking for a Manager-Owner for Sears.’. We married soon afterwards, and opened the Sears store on November 20th, 2001. Six years ago.”

The store has done well. Featuring two well-known, reliable brands - Kenmore appliances and Craftsman tools - the business flourished because of the hard work of J. T., Lexene, and the staff. “Once when business slowed, a man told me, ‘This is when the people hwo run a business right ill continue to grow and prosper’. And we did. I really like the customers, and if my product’s wortwhile, I’ll tell them so. If not, I’ll tell them that too. My Daddy taught me one thing - ‘Honesty is not the best policy. It’s the only policy’.”

When Lexene was diagnosed with breast cancer last October, very few people knew. Especially when J. T. played his Santa role Downtown. “My wife said, ‘Something’s not right. so we went to the doctor, and it was breast cancer. We went to UK’s Markey Cancer Center for treatment. The cancerous breast was removed, and they prescribed chemotherapy. That first chemo treatment almost killed her, because it was either too strong of a dose, or because of an allergy she had. She didn’t remember Christmas at all. She took the treatments after last year’s Downtown Christmas, and I was down in Lexington with her for much of December.”

While with Lexene, his assistant, George Johnson, and the rest of his staff took over the duties of running the store during the busy Holiday period. She would get on a treatment program that was better for her. She lost her hair due to the chemo, and to show support, J. T. shaved his head, too. The chemo ended in March of this year, but 30 radiation treatments in Lexington would follow. “But after five treatments, they quit them, because she was being burned up by the radiation, where she’s light-skinned.” Lexene’s now on Herceptin, a new drug that J. T. says “actually attacks the bad cells.” She has three more treatments left, and on January 17th, her treatments end.

The past twelve months have left an enormous impact on both J. T. and Lexene. “Everything’s totally different. We won’t return to a normal life until later this Winter. Her attitude has changed, and it’s changed me as well. We come to each other for support. We have to.” J. T. told the Voice last Friday that Lexene’s feeling better overall these days, but there were days she would be tired. And there’s the concern that’s in the back of his mind. “Then we worry, will it (the cancer) come back? Each day is more precious now. You realize how short life is.”

This week will be a busy time for J. T. It already has been for the first of this week. “I’ll leave here Wednesday night, getting ready for Friday’s opening. On Thanksgiving Day, she’ll cook dinner, and along with lifting the turkey out of the over, I’ll be helping her out more in the kitchen. And her family will be there.” Along with Lexene’s parents, she has two grown children from a an earlier marriage, while J. T.’s three children are all grown and living out-of-state.

No doubt, this Thanksgiving Day will be a special one for the Bells, filled with many blessings and reasons their family will be thankful for. And the next day - this Friday - will come early for J. T. “I’ll be in the store at four in the morning, and I’ll open the door at five a.m.” He looks over at one of his salespeople on the floor, Sandy Gross, who gives him a half-smirk and a smile. Then he adds, “We give each other a hard time, and if we didn’t, we wouldn’t know what to do!”

And then there’s next week. When Santa’s Workshop will be moved from outdoors to indoors. Because of September’s fire at the old Stacy Hotel building, Lester Smith Park won’t be used for Santa and his elves. This year, the kids, their parents and their grandparents will be inside the warmth of the Breathitt County Library, where J. T. Bell will again reign supreme.

It works for him. “I tell people that the only reason I run the Sears store is because it allows me to be Santa Claus for Christmas. The kids sitting on my lap, the little ones taking my beard with their tiny hands, and them telling me what they want. That’s my Christmas. If I die, they can put this on my gravestone - ‘He was Jackson’s Santa Claus’. That’s fine with me.”