In 1955, Air Force Colonel Harry Shoup had a very important job. It was the height of the Cold War, and Shoup was working at the Continental Air Defense Command — now known as the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).
One December day, his phone rang, but it wasn’t his regular phone. It was the red phone — the phone that had a number so secret that only he and a four-star general at the Pentagon knew of its existence. But when he answered the phone, a child was on the other end.
“Is this Santa Claus?” the child asked. Shoup, according to his children — Terri Van Keuren, Rick Shoup, Pam Farrel — was initially surprised and annoyed, but when the child began to cry, he quickly changed his tone. He said, “Ho, ho, ho,” and asked the child whether he had been good — and then he asked to speak to a parent.
His children remember Shoup as…
