Rash's Surname Index
Notes for Warren G. MERCER
Warren Mercer, 83, who played Santa Claus for several generations of West Chester children and co-founded the annual Old Fiddlers Picnic in Chester County, died Friday at the Friends Hall nursing home in West Chester.
Mr. Mercer was a lifetime resident of the West Chester area. He was born in East Bradford Township and worked as a plasterer, first in a business of his own and then, from 1957 until his retirement in 1979, for the West Chester University maintenance department.
He and his wife, Phoebe, had lived for the last three years on New Jersey Avenue in West Chester.
Sixty-one years ago, Mr. Mercer helped found the Old Fiddlers Picnic, an annual country music festival held in Hibernia Park near Coatesville.
Mr. Mercer also played guitar and served as master of ceremonies for a country-western musical group called the Royal Ramblers, which he helped form more than 50 years ago.
But he was probably best known as Santa Claus, a part he played on Christmas morning from 1956 to 1984 at Chester County Hospital in West Chester. He was also Santa Claus for many years to children visiting the Mosteller's department store when it was in downtown West Chester. For four years in the early 1980s, he guided Santa's sleigh in the annual parade for West Chester's Old Fashioned Christmas celebration.
He was a member of the Westminster Presbyterian Church in West Chester, the West Chester Masonic Lodge, the Fame Fire Company and the Goshen Fire Company.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by two sons, Clarence Mercer and William Mercer; two daughters, Marty Beam and Nancy Purcell; seven grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.
Services will be held at 11 a.m. tomorrow at Founds Funeral Home, High and Union Streets in West Chester, with interment following at Bradford Cemetery in Marshallton.
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