William Carroll was a childhood recipient of a gift from Globe Santa in 1962, the year his father died.
Christmas brings up a lot of emotions for me and so does Globe Santa, which was my family’s lifeline back to normalcy. It even shaped the work I did later in life.
I was born in1953, the middle of five boys, raised mostly in Somerville. Mom’s job was to take care of us, and my dad was the breadwinner, as most men were back then.
His name was Eddie Carroll, and he worked for the B&M Railroad in Cambridge for 20 years or so, cleaning the old cabooses along with the yards and tracks. He made sure they were aligned so there wouldn’t be any accidents.After he was laid off, he walked across the street and landed a job at the Coca-Cola bottling plant in the maintenance department. We had uncles and aunts who had a little bit more than we did and helped us along. Other relatives helped out as well…