The terrible ordeal had shattered two adult lives.\u00a0 Now Bob suddenly realized the happiness of his growing daughter was also in jeopardy.\u00a0 As he ran his fingers through Barbara\u2019s hair, he prayed for some satisfactory answer to her question.<\/span><\/p>\n Bob May knew only too well what it meant to be \u201cdifferent.\u201d\u00a0 As a child he had been weak and delicate.\u00a0 With the innocent cruelty of children, his playmates had continually goaded the stunted, skinny lad to tears.\u00a0 Later, at Dartmouth from which he was graduated in 1926, Bob May was so small that he was always being mistaken for someone\u2019s little brother.<\/span><\/p>\n Nor was his adult life much happier.\u00a0 Unlike many of his classmates who floated from college into plush jobs, Bob became a lowly copywriter for Montgomery Ward, the big Chicago mail-order house.\u00a0 Now at 33 Bob was deep in debt, depressed, and sad.<\/span><\/p>\n Although Bob didn\u2019t know it at the time, the answer he gave the tousled haired child on his lap was to bring him to fame and fortune.\u00a0 It was also to bring joy to countless thousands of children like his own, Barbara.\u00a0\u00a0 On that December night in the shabby Chicago apartment, Bob cradled his little girl\u2019s head against his shoulder and began to tell a story:<\/span><\/p>\n Once upon a time there was a reindeer named Rudolph, the only reindeer in the world that had a big red nose.\u00a0 Naturally, people called him Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.\u201d<\/span><\/em>\u00a0 As Bob went on to tell about Rudolph, he tried desperately to communicate to Barbara the knowledge that even though some creatures of God are strange and different they often enjoy the miraculous power to make others happy.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cRudolph,\u201d<\/span><\/em>\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Bob explained,\u00a0<\/span>\u201cWas terribly embarrassed by his unique nose.\u00a0 Other reindeer laughed at him; his mother, father and sister were mortified, too.\u00a0 Even Rudolph wallowed in self-pity.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWhy was I born with such a terrible nose?\u201d<\/span><\/em>\u00a0<\/span><\/span>he cried.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWell,\u201d<\/span><\/em>\u00a0<\/span><\/span>continued Bob,\u00a0<\/span>\u201cOne Christmas Eve Santa Claus got his team of husky reindeer\u2014Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, and Vixon\u2014ready for their yearly trip around the world.\u00a0 The entire reindeer community assembled to cheer these great heroes on their way.\u00a0 But a terrible fog engulfed the earth that evening, and Santa knew that the mist was so thick he wouldn\u2019t be able to find the chimneys.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n \u201cSuddenly, Rudolph appeared\u2014his red nose glowing brighter than ever.\u00a0 Santa sensed at once that here was the answer to his perplexing problem.\u00a0 He led Rudolph to the front of the sleigh, fastened the harness, and climbed in.\u00a0 They were off!\u00a0 Rudolph guided Santa to every chimney that night.\u00a0 Rain and fog, snow and sleet, nothing bothered Rudolph for his bright nose penetrated the mist like a beacon.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cAnd so it was that Rudolph became the most famous and beloved of all the reindeer.\u00a0 The huge red nose he once hid in shame was now the envy of every buck and doe in the reindeer world.\u00a0 Santa Claus told everyone that Rudolph had saved the day; and from that Christmas, Rudolph has been living serenely happy.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Little Barbara laughed with glee when her father finished.\u00a0 Every night she begged him to repeat the tale until finally Bob could rattle it off in his sleep.\u00a0 Then at Christmas time he decided to make the story into a poem like \u201cThe Night Before Christmas\u201d and prepared it in book form with crude pictures for Barbara\u2019s personal gift.<\/span><\/p>\n Night after night Bob worked on the verses after Barbara had gone to bed for he was determined his daughter should have a worthwhile gift, even though he could not afford to buy one.<\/span><\/p>\n Then as Bob was about to put the finishing touches on\u00a0<\/span>Rudolph<\/span>, tragedy struck.\u00a0 Evelyn May died.\u00a0 Bob, his hopes crushed, turned to Barbara as his chief comfort.\u00a0 Yet, despite his grief, he sat at his desk in the quiet, now lonely, apartment and worked on\u00a0<\/span>Rudolph<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>with tears in his eyes.<\/span><\/p>\n Shortly after Barbara had cried with joy over his handmade gift on Christmas morning, Bob was asked to an employee\u2019s holiday party at Montgomery Ward.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t want to go, but his office associates insisted.\u00a0 When Bob finally agreed, he took with him the poem and read it to the crowd.\u00a0 At first the noisy throng listened in laughter and gaiety.\u00a0 Then they became silent and at the end broke into spontaneous applause.\u00a0 That was in 1938.<\/span><\/p>\n By Christmas 1947, some 6,000,000 copies of the booklet had been given away or sold, makingRudolph<\/span>, one of the most widely distributed books in the world.\u00a0 The demand of Rudolph\u2014sponsored products increased so much in variety and number that educators and historians predicted Rudolph would come to occupy a permanent niche in the Christmas legend.<\/span><\/p>\n Through the years of unhappiness, the tragedy of his wife\u2019s death, and his ultimate success with Rudolph, Bob May has captured a sense of serenity.\u00a0 As each Christmas rolls around, he recalls with thankfulness the night when his daughter Barbara\u2019s question inspired him to write the story.<\/span><\/p>\n \n On a December night in Chicago several years ago, a little girl climbed onto her father\u2019s lap and asked a question.\u00a0 It was a simple question asked in a child\u2019s curiosity, yet it had a heart-rending effect on Robert May. \u201cDaddy,\u201d four-year-old Barbara asked, \u201cWhy isn\u2019t my mommy just like everybody else\u2019s mommy?\u201d Bob May […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9wIlQ-ss","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flag-works.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1764"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flag-works.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flag-works.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flag-works.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flag-works.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1764"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.flag-works.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1769,"href":"https:\/\/www.flag-works.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1764\/revisions\/1769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flag-works.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flag-works.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flag-works.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"