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Last year The Meadville Tribune published a story and a slideshow on a local man who has been portraying Santa on the Streets of Meadville for more than a generation. We revisit this story this weekend as this man again begins to don his red suit officially Friday evening with the Light - Up Meadville celebration at Diamond Park.

As his fingers glide across the smooth skin on his chin searching for spots he missed with his razor, Meadville’s Ray Eldridge looks into the mirror above his bathroom sink. It’s the end of April and this shave will be his last for eight months. He washes off the remaining suds and looks deep into his face. “That’s it,” he says as his eyes begin to glimmer and a smile forms.

He begins to let his facial hair grow every May and doesn’t shave again until the end of December.

“I do not like a beard,” he admits, but there is no way he would ever not grow one.

The 83-year-old man is Santa Claus. He believes God has groomed him his entire life to play Santa, and Eldridge knows he can’t be Santa without a beard. Even though he finds having a beard a pain — eating is messy, especially soups or foods with sauces — he doesn’t feel he can let God or the people of Meadville down — they expect him to be there. “Santa has so many interesting encounters,” he said. “And he (God) has been working on me my whole life to play Santa. I can’t quit on him now!”

Eldridge’s first beard came when he was a young man in the Navy. He got upset with his captain aboard the USS Loy, a destroyer escort patrolling the Atlantic and then the Pacific oceans in World War II. Eldridge was a sonar specialist working on the bridge.

“I can’t remember what the captain did, but I remember being mad at him for something,” Eldridge admits 60 years later. “I knew beards were illegal in the Navy, so I grew one, not a big one — just a goatee.” The captain took notice, mentioning the beard several times. The captain got more and more aggravated about it, but always stopped short of ordering Eldridge to shave.

“One day, after a while of this, I went up on the bridge and the captain says (Eldridge raises his voice with an authoritative tone), ‘Eldridge, go down and shave off that beard and THAT’S AN ORDER!’ ”

So he shaved — end of story.

Well, not entirely the end. Before he shaved he had a picture taken.

That picture is responsible for Eldridge becoming Santa Claus.

Years later he was going through some of his belongings and found the picture. His wife, Mary, who had never seen the picture or her husband with a beard, was curious and quite taken by the picture. She asked him to grow a beard for her. He refused. He worked for Prudential Insurance and thought a clean-shaven image was better suited for his job.