As accompanist Vince Eilenberger (right) plays piano, Arrows Christian Academy students and staff gather around the Christmas tree at UPMC Altoona on Monday during the annual tree lighting ceremony. Mirror photo by William Kibler

UPMC Altoona’s annual Christmas tree lighting takes place in the atrium lobby of the hospital — the domain of greeter services coordinator Michael Walton.

Hospital employees gathered in the lobby and on balconies that overlook the lobby from the upper floors Monday to see and hear Arrows Christian Academy students sing carols to the accompaniment of pianist Vince Eilenberger.

The generous and hospitable spirit of the season is one Walton tries to embody year-round.

“I try to start them off on the right foot,” Walton said of the people he encounters as greeter.

His approach is based on the “golden rule stuff” — do unto others — that he learned from his parents, he said.

Many of those he encounters are coming to the hospital for “something not so nice” — including treatment of their own sicknesses or to support loved ones who are ill, and they can use the morale boost, he said.

In addition to the golden rule lessons from his parents, he absorbed a liking for talk due to the way he was raised.

His parents were sociable, he said.

And because his father was a policeman in the Air Force, and they moved around a lot, he learned to make up for lost social time when he got together with relatives.

He was born in Bossier City, La., lived in Georgia, New York, Italy and Turkey; and attended high school in Homestead, Fla., before coming to Altoona when his father got a job at Van Zandt VA Medical Center.

At the tree lighting on Monday, Walton got “a kick” seeing the hospital workers in a different setting than at their usual work stations.

It presented a striking image of “togetherness,” he said.

He’s been on the job 34 years, and plans, at 58, to work until he’s 66, which “sounds like a cool number,” he said.

He formerly had a job across the lobby in patient registration, where one of his roles was supporting his predecessor in the greeters’ coordinator job, Janet Ellis.

When Ellis retired, she asked whether he’d like to succeed her.

He wasn’t unhappy in the current job, and it took him three weeks to talk himself into the change, he said.

Now he thanks her in his heart every day for suggesting that change.

Greeting became his “thing,” he said.

The incentive for doing it well includes compliments that Ellis herself sometimes relays to him from her encounters with people in the hospital.

While he likes the annual Christmas tree lighting, his favorite Christmas memory is the first time he and his wife Ashley, a registered nurse who works at UPMC Bedford, purchased ornaments together at a local department store for their first Christmas tree nine years ago.

It’s a tradition they renew every year, buying ornaments one-by-one, he said.

Carols sung by the Arrows chorus included “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” “All Hail the King,” “Joy to the World” and “Angels We Have Heard on High.”

Father Michael Pleva, introduced by master of ceremonies and hospital President Michael Corso, Pleva’s cousin, gave the blessing.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.