Using military radar to track Santa’s flight as he delivers gifts to all the good little boys and girls, millions of kids follow Santa Claus on his annual voyage around the globe with the NORAD Santa Tracker. However, not many are aware that a Colorado newspaper ad typo more than 50 years ago led to the start of this well-known Christmas custom.
A phone number was provided in an advertising by Sears Roebuck & Co. for youngsters to contact Santa in a 1955 Colorado Springs newspaper. However, the misprinted number led to a phone on the desk of Col. Harry Shoup, the head of operations for the Continental Air Defense Command, rather than a direct line to the North Pole.
Terri Van Keuren, a daughter of Shoup, remembers the red phone as being significant.
Van Keuren told StoryCorps that only her dad and a four-star general at the Pentagon had the number when she and her siblings recently went to tell the tale of how the Santa tracking program got started.
So Col. Shoup was taken aback when a tiny voice on the other end of the line begged for Santa when the phone rang one day that December. Shoup was originally angered by the call, but he cooperated, according to what his kids told StoryCorps. Shoup started sending airmen to man the line to answer for Santa when the calls kept coming in. The glass board that the command center used to track aircraft over the United States was enhanced by the airmen on Christmas Eve to include Santa’s sleigh.
Van Keuren told StoryCorps that only her dad and a four-star general at the Pentagon had the number when she and her siblings recently went to tell the tale of how the Santa tracking program got started.
So Col. Shoup was taken aback when a tiny voice on the other end of the line begged for Santa when the phone rang one day that December. Shoup was originally angered by the call, but he cooperated, according to what his kids told StoryCorps. Shoup started sending airmen to man the line to answer for Santa when the calls kept coming in. The glass board that the command center used to track aircraft over the United States was enhanced by the airmen on Christmas Eve to include Santa’s sleigh.
Santa tracking was transferred to the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) in 1958. Even now, NORAD employees and friends donate their time to answering children’s calls, letters, and emails as well as tracking Santa’s flight each Christmas.
