Column: ‘Ask for help. Just ask for help.’ How a community rallied around the ‘Home Alone’ Santa during his illness

Of all the Santas who’ve entered hearts and homes — down a chimney or through a TV screen — Ken Campbell has entered more than most.

In 1990, Campbell played the Honda-driving, Tic Tac-dispensing Santa in “Home Alone,” the second highest grossing Christmas movie of all time and a 2023 addition to the National Film Registry.

This Christmas, Campbell is recovering from cancer surgery after being diagnosed in October with squamous cell carcinoma. Part of his jawbone, along with his lymph nodes and part of his leg bone were removed earlier this month. Next he’ll undergo radiation and possibly chemotherapy.

Last January, Campbell lost his SAG-AFTRA health insurance. His family launched a GoFundMe to help cover his medical bills.

“You may know Ken from his roles as Santa in Home Alone, the guy Bill Murray kisses in Groundhog’s Day, or in Armageddon where his character loses his life saving the world from a giant asteroid,” a note from his daughter Michaela Campbell, reads. “Now, we need the world’s help to save Ken.”

I learned about Campbell’s diagnosis and GoFundMe from Kelly Leonard, Second City’s vice president of creative strategy, innovation and business development. Campbell is an alum of Second City, the famous improv comedy club, where he studied alongside Steve Carell and Chris Farley.

“Ken was working here when I started washing dishes and working in the box office,” Leonard told me. “He’s the quintessential Second City type, in the sense that he’s a wise guy and a lug and all heart. So much so that you’re a little scared of him but you like him and you’re like, ‘Man, I hope he likes me.’”

Leonard learned about Campbell’s GoFundMe through friends and was moved to help.

There are a few different stories happening here.

One is that Campbell, a human who spent a huge chunk of his life bringing laughter and joy and light to other humans, is suffering. Another is that our health care system is such that he — like so many others — needs to crowdfund his treatment. Another is that the crowd — people he knows and people he doesn’t — came through.

Another is Leonard’s.

Leonard and his wife, Anne Libera, have two children, Nick and Nora. Nick is an actor and Second City alum. Nora was diagnosed with cancer in her liver and lungs in 2018. She was 16.

The crowd came through for her too.

Leonard and Libera created a GoFundMe to help defray the bills. They also created a CaringBridge page to keep their friends and family updated on Nora’s treatments and progress and setbacks. They had #TeamNora hats and T-shirts made and took a photo of the Second City staff wearing them.

Word spread fast. Leonard’s and Libera’s Facebook pages were quickly filled with photos of celebrities holding #TeamNora signs: Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and Kate McKinnon. The cast of “Murphy Brown.” Stephen Colbert. David Schwimmer. Anthony Rizzo. Megan Rapinoe. The cast of “The Office.”

“Obviously I know it’s all for me,” Nora told me at the time. “But sometimes it feels like it’s for someone else. It hasn’t really hit me that that’s all for me. They’re cheering me on.”

In an early CaringBridge update, Leonard wrote: “Nora is strong and brave. She is strong and brave because she has a community of family and friends who have taught her to hold herself up and when she can’t, we’ll all do it for her. She is strong and brave because she has resources and access to total strangers who are using their expertise to heal her. She was shown and taught that kindness matters.”

Nora died in August 2019. She was 17. Her memorial at Second City was a celebration of laughter and music and memories, woven together with the deepest sort of grief and missing. Hundreds attended.

“We just put up the tree and there’s a bunch of Nora ornaments,” Leonard told me this week. “Her school had the annual holiday fair the other day. It ain’t linear, man.”

Grief, he meant.

“I feel a little softer this year, in a good way,” he said. “I feel like I’m not prone to be depressed or ruminate over what I don’t have and I am more prone to frame the good of her memory.”

Watching a community rally around Campbell — helping a community rally about Campbell — reminds Leonard how essential it is to gather people around you when you’re suffering.

“It’s everything,” he said. “People are my oxygen and I know I’m like that, but everyone is like that. They just don’t know it or they don’t know how to ask for it or it’s uncomfortable. For me, it’s important to use whatever voice I’ve got to say to people, ‘Ask for help. Just ask for help. Don’t be afraid to share what you’re going through.’ Those are markers of who we are and how we’re connected to each other.”

I love his model and I Iove his courage and I love his generosity to share them with us. We’re talking a lot about gifts this time of year. Those are gifts.

“I don’t know, man,” Leonard said. “If all the crap you go through doesn’t make you more empathetic and have more heart, you’re doing it wrong. And I don’t want to do it wrong.”

I don’t either.

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