Im posting this because the message is very clear. Sometimes things happen by chance that develop into incredible situations, sometimes incredible situations come from the least likely places and/or people. Sometimes the most abstract situation can become your greatest accomplishment. This is one of the examples of a person making the choice to have fun and be kind solely for the sake of kindness. If you have a little time today, take a moment to read this story. Im betting you never knew how it all came about. NORADs Santa Tracker Began With A Typo This Christmas Eve people all over the world will log on to the official Santa Tracker to follow his progress through U.S. military radar. This all started in 1955, with a misprint in a Colorado Springs newspaper and a call to Col. Harry Shoups secret hotline at the Continental Air Defense Command, now known as NORAD. Shoups children, Terri Van Keuren, 65, Rick Shoup, 59, and Pam Farrell, 70, recently visited with a reporter to talk about how the tradition began. Terri remembers her dad had two phones on his desk, including a red one. Only a four-star general at the Pentagon and my dad had the number, she says. This was the 50s, this was the Cold War, and he would have been the first one to know if there was an attack on the United States, Rick says. The red phone rang one day in December 1955, and Shoup answered it, Pam says. And then there was a small voice that just asked... Is this Santa Claus? His children remember Shoup as straight-laced and disciplined, and he was annoyed and upset by the call and thought it was a joke — but then, Terri says, the little voice started crying. And Dad realized that it wasnt a joke, her sister says. So he talked to him, ho-ho-hod and asked if he had been a good boy and, May I talk to your mother? And the mother got on and said, You havent seen the paper yet? Theres a phone number to call Santa. Its in the Sears ad. Dad looked it up, and there it was, his red phone number. And they had children calling one after another, so he put a couple of airmen on the phones to act like Santa Claus. It got to be a big joke at the command center. You know, The old mans really flipped his lid this time. Were answering Santa calls, Terri says. The airmen had this big glass board with the United States on it and Canada, and when airplanes would come in they would track them, Pam says. And Christmas Eve of 1955, when Dad walked in, there was a drawing of a sleigh with eight reindeer coming over the North Pole, Rick says. Dad said, What is that? They say, Colonel, were sorry. We were just making a joke. Do you want us to take that down? Dad looked at it for a while, and next thing you know, Dad had called the radio station and had said, This is the commander at the Combat Alert Center, and we have an unidentified flying object. Why, it looks like a sleigh. Well, the radio stations would call him like every hour and say, Wheres Santa now? Terri says. And later in life he got letters from all over the world, people saying, Thank you, Colonel, for having, you know, this sense of humor. And in his 90s, he would carry those letters around with him in a briefcase that had a lock on it like it was top-secret information, she says. You know, he was an important guy, but this is the thing hes known for. Yeah, Rick says, its probably the thing he was proudest of, too. Merry Christmas Crimson Tiders. ~Charlie
Posted on: Tue, 23 Dec 2014 12:45:29 +0000
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