#Col. Harry Shoup

[trexalicious]

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) has been tracking Santa Claus on Christmas Eve since 1955:

The tradition began when a child accidentally called the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) Operations Center instead of Santa. Air Force Col. Harry Shoup, the operations officer, answered the call and asked his staff to check the radar for Santa's location.

How it works

NORAD starts tracking Santa around 4 AM EST on Christmas Eve and uses its website, app, and social media to share his location. Children can also call the toll-free number 1-877-HI-NORAD (1-877-446-6723) to ask "Where's Santa?".

Other ways to track Santa

In addition to the NORAD website and app, children can also use Amazon Alexa, OnStar, and social media to track Santa. If you have children, grandchildren or other ankle biters around, this is actually rather fun and can be done from ANYWHERE in the world... 🎅❤️🎄

[npr-stan]

NORAD's Santa Tracker began with a typo and a good sport https://www.npr.org/2014/12/19/371647099/norads-santa-tracker-began-with-a-typo-and-a-good-sport

[jwood718]

NPR: The Storycorp tale behind the NORAD “Santa Tracker”

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 Shoup’s secret hotline at the Continental Air Defense Command, now known as NORAD.

Shoup’s children, Terri Van Keuren, 65, Rick Shoup, 59, and Pam Farrell, 70, recently visited StoryCorps to talk about how the tradition began.

The Santa Tracker tradition started with this Sears ad, which instructed children to call Santa on what turned out to be a secret military hotline. Kids today can call 1-877 HI-NORAD (1-877-446-6723) to talk to NORAD staff about Santa’s exact location. Courtesy of NORAD

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 wasn’t a joke,” her sister says. “So he talked to him, ho-ho-ho’d and asked if he had been a good boy and, 'May I talk to your mother?’ And the mother got on and said, 'You haven’t seen the paper yet? There’s a phone number to call Santa. It’s 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 man’s really flipped his lid this time. We’re answering Santa calls,’ ” Terri says.

Col. Harry Shoup came to be known as the “Santa Colonel.” He died in 2009.  Courtesy of NORAD

“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, we’re 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, 'Where’s 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 he’s known for.”

“Yeah,” Rick says, “it’s probably the thing he was proudest of, too.”

Produced for Morning Edition by Jasmyn Belcher Morris.

StoryCorps is a national nonprofit that gives people the chance to interview friends and loved ones about their lives. These conversations are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, allowing participants to leave a legacy for future generations. Learn more, including how to interview someone in your life, at StoryCorps.org.

Terri Van Keuren (from left), Rick Shoup and Pamela Farrell, children of Col. Harry Shoup, commander of the Continental Air Defense Command, visited StoryCorps in Castle Rock, Colo., to talk about how their dad helped to create the U.S. military’s Santa Tracker.

A reconstructed story (it didn't reblog correctly) that I last posted in 2018.

[lakelandg]

NORAD Tracks Santa

Like many origin stories, NORAD’s mission to track Santa began by accident. In 1955 a young child, trying to reach Santa, dialed the misprinted phone number from a department store ad in the local newspaper. Instead of calling Santa, the child called the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) Operations Center in Colorado Springs, Colo.   Air Force Col. Harry Shoup, the commander on duty that…

[sftsocialnews]

There’s no one busier on Christmas Eve than Santa Claus, and one organization has been tracking his exceptional gift-giving abilities for more than 60 years. This modern tradition actually started in 1955, “when a young child accidentally dialed the unlisted phone number of the (Continental Air Defense Command) Operations Center upon seeing an newspaper advertisement telling kids to call Santa,” according to the bi-national organization North American Aerospace Defense Command. The director of operations at the time, Col. Harry Shoup, “answered the phone and instructed his staff to check the radar for indications of Santa making his way south from the North Pole,” the organization says on its website. And so the tracking of Mr. Claus began. It continued when NORAD formed and replaced CONAD in 1958. Since then, NORAD says it has “has dutifully reported Santa’s location on Dec. 24 to millions of children and families across the globe.” If you’re interested in tracking Santa on Christmas Eve, you can call NORAD at (877) HI-NORAD or follow Santa’s location using NORAD’s Tracks Santa website — that’s the map above — or its social media channels. While NORAD cannot confirm when Santa will be at each house, the organization says it does “know from history that it appears he arrives only when children are asleep!” That means between 9 p.m. and midnight on Christmas Eve in most countries, NORAD adds. “If children are still awake when Santa arrives, he moves on to other houses,” the organization notes. “He returns later, but only when the children are asleep!” Contributing: Kurt Snibbe, Southern California News Group #Santa #track #Santa #Christmas #Eve

[historybizarre]

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.

[taoofbill]

The Santa Tracker Story

Santa & Reindeer vintage greeting card On November 30, 1955, a phone rang on Col. Harry Shoup’s desk at Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD). CONAD was tasked with watching for a Soviet attack by air and alerting Strategic Air Command. In the midst of the Cold War, a phone call to Colonel Shoup’s desk could have brought critical news for national security. Col. Harry Shoup was at his office…

[sciencespies]

Why NORAD Tracks Santa Claus

https://sciencespies.com/history/why-norad-tracks-santa-claus/

Why NORAD Tracks Santa Claus

Smithsonian Voices National Air and Space Museum

Why NORAD Tracks Santa Claus

December 21st, 2020, 2:07PM / BY Amelia Grabowski

Gen. Glen VanHerck, Commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command talks on the phone as part of a video celebrating the NORAD Santa Tracker’s 65th year.

On November 30, 1955, a phone rang on Col. Harry Shoup’s desk at Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD). CONAD was tasked with watching for a Soviet attack by air and alerting Strategic Air Command. In the midst of the Cold War, a phone call to Colonel Shoup’s desk could have brought critical news for national security.

Colonel Harry Shoup became known as the “Santa Colonel” due to his role in establishing the tradition of NORAD tracking Santa’s safe flight. (U.S. Air Force)

However, when Colonel Shoup answered, the little voice on the other end asked “Is this Santa Claus?”

“There may be a guy called Santa Claus, at the North Pole, but he’s not the one I worry about coming from that direction,” was Shoup’s reply, according to an article that ran the following day. One can only imagine how the young caller reacted.

Why call CONAD to reach Santa? It all started with a misdial. That year, Sears ran an ad where Santa invited young people to “Call me direct on my telephone.” However, one caller didn’t heed the ad’s warning to “be sure and dial the correct number,” and instead reached Colonel Shoup—sparking a chain of events that would become a Christmas tradition.

A 1955 Sears’ ad inviting children to call Santa on his personal phone. (Sears)

The week of Christmas, Shoup’s staff added Santa and his sleigh to the plexiglass map CONAD used to track unidentified aircraft. The joke sparked an idea and CONAD told press they “will continue to track and guard Santa and his sleigh on his trip to and from the U.S. against possible attack from those who do not believe in Christmas.”

Journalist Matt Novak of Gizmodo points out that both Shoup and CONAD’s responses were less “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus,” and more “Yes, Virginia, there is a Cold War.” Their messaging, that CONAD was there to protect Santa against threats, aligned with a larger media campaign focusing on the importance of air defense.

However, the Cold War wasn’t the first time the U.S. military reported seeing Santa. According to Yoni Appelbaum for The Atlantic, during World War II, General Eisenhower issued a press release confirming “a new North Pole Command has been formed … Santa Claus is directing operations … He has under his command a small army of gnomes,” although the censored version cut out the location of Santa’s headquarters. In 1948, the Air Force reported one of their early warning radars had detected “one unidentified sleigh, powered by eight reindeer, at 14,000 feet, heading 180 degrees.”

CONAD would soon set itself apart from these earlier messages of Santa Claus levity. In 1956, one year after Colonel Shoup spoke with the young caller, the Associated Press and United Press International called to ask if Shoup’s team planned to track Santa again, and CONAD confirmed they did. In 1958, the newly established North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) continued—and grew—the tradition.

In the 1960s, NORAD sent records to radio stations with updates on Santa’s path to play for their listeners. The 1970s brought with it Santa Tracker commercials. By 1997, Santa Tracker went digital—launching the website may of our younger readers will be familiar with. (Which has, of course, received some enhancements since then.)

How NORAD tracks Santa has also evolved over the years. Their website explains that they now use a combination of radar, satellites that “detect Rudolph’s bright red nose with no problem,” and jet fighters. “Canadian NORAD fighter pilots, flying the CF-18, take off out of Newfoundland and welcome Santa to North America,” explains NORAD, and in the United States, “American NORAD fighter pilots in either the F-15s, F16s or F-22s get the thrill of flying with Santa.”

#History

[newstfionline]

A child calling Santa reached NORAD instead. Christmas Eve was never the same.

By Steve Hendrix, Washington Post, December 24, 2018

Col. Harry Shoup was a real by-the-book guy.

At home, his two daughters were limited to phone calls of no more than three minutes (monitored by an egg timer) and were automatically grounded if they missed curfew by even a minute. At work, during his 28-year Air Force career, the decorated fighter pilot was known as a no-nonsense commander and stickler for rules.

Which makes what happened that day in 1955 even more of a Christmas miracle.

It was a December day in Colorado Springs when the phone rang on Col. Shoup’s desk. Not the black phone, the red phone.

“When that phone rang, it was a big deal,” said Shoup’s daughter, Terri Van Keuren, 69, a retiree in Castle Rock, Colo. “It was the middle of the Cold War and that phone meant bad news.”

Shoup was a commander of the Continental Air Defense Command, CONAD, the early iteration of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). Then, as now, the joint U.S.-Canadian operation was the tense nerve center of America’s defensive shield against a sneak air attack. In 1955, the command center was filled with a massive map of North America on plexiglass, behind which backward-writing technicians on scaffolds marked every suspect radar blip in grease pencil.

It was not a place of fun and games. And when that red phone rang--it was wired directly to a four-star general at the Pentagon--things got real. All eyes would have been on Shoup when he answered.

“Col. Shoup,” he barked. But there was silence.

Until finally, a small voice said, “Is this Santa Claus?”

Shoup, by all accounts, was briefly confused and then fully annoyed. “Is this a joke?” Glaring at the wide-eyed staff for any sign of a smile, he let the caller have it with all the indignity of a bird-colonel who brooked no nonsense on this most vital of all phone lines.

“Just what do you think you’re doing,” he began.

But then the techno-military might of the United States was brought up short by the sound of sniffles. Whoever was on the phone was crying, and Shoup suddenly realized it really was a child who was trying to reach Santa Claus.

The colonel paused, considered and then responded: “Ho, ho, ho!” he said as his crew looked on astonished. “Of course this is Santa Claus. Have you been a good boy?”

He talked to the local youngster for several minutes, hearing his wishes for toys and treats and assuring him he would be there on Christmas Eve. Then the boy asked Santa to bring something nice for his mommy.

“I will, I will,” Santa-Shoup said. “In fact, could I speak to your mommy now?”

The boy put his mother on the phone, and Shoup went back to business, crisply explaining to the woman just what facility their call had reached.

“He said later he thought she must have been a military wife,” said Van Keuren. “She was properly cowed.”

But she also had an explanation. The woman asked Shoup to look at that day’s local newspaper. Specifically, at a Sears ad emblazoned with a big picture of Santa that invited kids to “Call me on my private phone, and I will talk to you personally any time day or night.”

The number provided, ME 2-6681, went right to one of the most secure phones in the country.

“They were off by one digit,” said Van Keuren. “It was a typo.”

When Shoup hung up, the phone rang again. He ordered his staff to answer each Santa call while he got on the (black) phone with AT&T to set up a new link to Washington. Let Sears have the old number, he told them.

That might have been the end of it. But a few nights later, Shoup, as was his tradition, took his family to have Christmas Eve dinner with his on-duty troops. When they walked into the control center, he spotted a little image of a sleigh pulled by eight unregistered reindeer, coming over the top of the world.

Van Keuren was only 6 at the time, but the exchange that followed became stuff of both family and Air Force legend.

“What’s that,” the commanding officer asked.

“Just having a little fun Colonel,” they answered, waiting for the blowup.

Shoup pondered the offense as the team waited. Then he ordered someone to get the community relations officer. And soon Shoup was on the phone to a local radio station. CONAD had picked up unidentified incoming, possible North Pole origin, distinctly sleigh-shaped.

The radio station ate it up, the networks got involved and an enduring tradition was born. This Christmas Eve will mark the 63rd straight year that NORAD will publicly track Santa’s sleigh on its global rounds.

“This is our most feel-good mission,” said Maj. Andrew Hennessy, a Canadian Army officer posted at NORAD headquarters in Colorado. “We know Santa brings lasting joy to kids around the world and we’re glad to have that as our fourth mission one day out of the year.” (On the other 364 days, NORAD’s three-pronged mandate is to oversee air threats, general aerospace control and, in recent years, maritime warnings for potential threats from sea.)

In good military fashion, the Santa tracking command has grown terrifically complex. NORAD deploys satellites, radar, jet fighters and Santa cams to feed its website, apps and social media accounts used by more than 2 million followers. Naughty and nice alike can follow Santa’s movement on 3-D maps in eight languages. Last year, when Alexa was asked “Where’s Santa?” more than 1.5 million times, it was NORAD that fed her the answer.

But the real emotional outlay comes in the Colorado Springs live call center, staffed for 20 hours on Dec. 24 by more than 1,500 volunteers (many of them local service members and their families). With a nine-page Santa Tracker manual in hand, they fielded more than 126,000 calls in 2017.

“As soon as you put the phone down, it rings again,” said Hennessy, who has done duty in the call center. He remembers telling one young Boston caller that Santa had been confirmed over Maine heading south but--and this is a primary NORAD message--the sleigh wouldn’t stop unless the boy was in bed.

“The next thing I heard was the phone hitting the floor,” he said. “Mom picked it up and said, ‘Can I call you back, he’s never done that before.’”

Shoup went on to ever-higher ranks in the Air Force, retiring as a wing commander. When his kids were old enough, he told them why so many of his colleagues called him the “Santa colonel,” but it was a quiet kind of legacy until the 25th anniversary of Santa tracking and TV news crews sought him out.

After that, he looked forward to getting the media calls each December, even carrying special business cards with the story typed on the back. He was buried at 91 in 2009 with a flyover of F-16 fighters, under a gravestone that notes his service in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. The last line reads: “Santa Colonel.”

“I want his message to be ‘Do the nice thing,’” said Van Keuren. “A lot of people would have hung up on that kid.”

[npr]

NORAD's Santa Tracker Began With A Typo And A Good Sport

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 Shoup's secret hotline at the Continental Air Defense Command, now known as NORAD.

Shoup's children, Terri Van Keuren, 65, Rick Shoup, 59, and Pam Farrell, 70, recently visited StoryCorps 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?' "

Continue reading

Photo: Courtesy of NORAD

[graveyarddirt]

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 wasn't a joke," her sister says. "So he talked to him, ho-ho-ho'd and asked if he had been a good boy and, 'May I talk to your mother?' And the mother got on and said, 'You haven't seen the paper yet? There's a phone number to call Santa. It's 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."

[readitonce-official]

Why NORAD Tracks Santa Claus | Smithsonian Voices | National Air and Space Museum

Why NORAD Tracks Santa Claus | Smithsonian Voices | National Air and Space Museum

Smithsonian Voices National Air and Space Museum Why NORAD Tracks Santa Claus December 21st, 2020, 2:07PM / BY Amelia Grabowski Gen. Glen VanHerck, Commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command talks on the phone as part of a video celebrating the NORAD Santa Tracker’s 65th year. On November 30, 1955, a phone rang on Col. Harry Shoup’s desk at Continental Air…

[bountyofbeads]

#Trump can't even handle a simple call from a 7 year old on #Christmas Eve. #Trump #MAGA #TrumpResign #TrumpShutdown #TrumpChristmasShutdown #25thAmendmentNow #TrumpResignNOW

OPEN MOUTH INSERT FOOT👉👉👉Do you 'still' believe in Santa🎅? #Trump's approach to a child's #Christmas🎄🎅🎁💂‍♂️✨⛄☃️🌟❄️👼🍭☕

The NORAD tradition began in 1955 when an error in an ad sent callers to inquire about Santa🎅 at a military facility in Colorado.

#Trump asks 7-year-old: 'Are you still a believer in Santa🎅?'😱😱😱😞😞😞

By Phil Helsel / Dec. 24, 2018 / 8:33 PM EST, Updated 7:24 AM EST Dec. 25, 2018 / NBC News / Posted December 25, 2018 /

Most presidents follow a traditional script when answering Christmas Eve calls from children calling NORAD about the whereabouts of Santa Claus. Donald Trump, true to form, did things his own way.

Children who make those calls aren't usually on the fence about their belief in Santa. But when a 7-year-old named Coleman called on Monday night, Trump pushed the child's credulity to the limit.

“Are you still a believer in Santa?” Trump asked. The president listened for a moment and then added, “Because at 7, it’s marginal, right?”

History did not record Coleman's response. But something he said apparently amused Trump, who chuckled as he listened. (Thousands of people on social media were less amused, worried that children — presumably under 7 — would have their beliefs punctured by a president who often appears to enjoy shattering illusions.)

As it was, Coleman was lucky to have gotten through, considering that much of the government is shut down because of a dispute between Trump and Congress over his demand for a border wall. But NORAD, short for North American Aerospace Defense Command, tweeted Friday that it would still track Santa's flight across the globe as it has done for more than six decades.

The government went into a partial shutdown at midnight on that day, after Congress failed to reach a stopgap funding deal. The shutdown, which has resulted in hundreds of thousands of federal employees being either furloughed or forced to work without immediate pay, could stretch into Thursday or longer.

First lady Melania Trump was heard asking a caller whether they had been good and wishing the child a merry Christmas. She told another child that Santa "is still far away" but was on his way to their home.

She later tweeted that helping children track Santa “is becoming one of my favorite traditions!”

The NORAD Santa tracking tradition began in 1955, when a newspaper printed the incorrect number in an ad and children called the Continental Air Defense Command Operations Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Col. Harry Shoup was on duty that night, and had operators report the location of Santa to the numerous callers, according to NORAD. The tradition was carried on when CONAD became NORAD after that agency was formed in 1958, the military said.

When Shoup took the first call, he assumed it was from the Pentagon or a general. Instead, he recalled in a interview with NORAD, a child's voice asked: "Are you really Santa Claus?"