"Daddy" four year old Barbara asked, "why isn't my mommy just like everybody else's mommy?"
Bob May stole a glance across his shabby two-room apartment. On a couch lay his young wife, Evelyn, racked with cancer. For 2 years she been bedridden; for 2 years, all Bob's income and saving had gone to pay for treatments and medicines.
The terrible ordeal already had shattered 2 adult lives. Now Bob suddenly realized the happiness in his growing daughter was also in jeapody. As he ran his fingers through Barbara's hair, he prayed for some satisfactory answer to her question.
Bob May knew only too well what it meant to be "different" As a child he had been weak and delicate. With the innocent cruelty of children, his playmates had continually goaded the stunted, skinny lad to tears. Later at Dartmouth, from which he was graduated in 1926, Bob May was so small that he was always being mistaken for someone's little brother.
Nor was his adult lfe much happier, Unlike many of his classmates who floated from college to plush jobs, Bob became a lowly copy writer for Montgomery Ward, the big Chicago mail order house. Now at 33, Bob was deep in debt, depressed and sad.
Although Bob did not know it at the time, the answer he the tousle-haired child from on his lap was to bring him to fame and fortune. It was also to bring joy to countless thousands of children like his own Barbara. On that December night in the shabby apartment, Bob cradled his little girls head against his shoulder and began to tell a story.
"Once upon a time there was a reindeer named Rudolph, the only reindeer in the world that had a big red nose. Naturally people called him Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer." As Bob went on to tell about Rudolph, he tied deperately 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.
Rudolph, Bob explained, was terribly embarrassed by the his unigue nose. Other reindeer laughed at him; his mother and father and sister were mortified too.
Even Rudolph wallowed in self-pity. "well" continued Bob, " then one Christmas Eve,...And so it was that Rudolph became the most famous and beloved of all the reindeer. The huge red nose he once his in shame was now the envy of every buck and doe in the reindeer world. Santa Claus told everyone Rudolph had saved the day and from that Christmas, Rudolph has been living serenely and happy"
Little Barbara laughed with glee when her father finished. Every night she begged him to repeat the tale until finally Bob could rattle it off in his sleep.Then, at Christmastiem, he decided to make the story into a poem like "the Night Before Christmas" and prepare it in book from illustrated with pictures, for Barbara's personal gift. 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...Then as Bob was about to put the finishing touches on Rudolph, tragedy struck.
Evelyn May died, His hopes crushed, Bob turned to Barbara as chief comfort. Yet, despite the grief, he sat at his desk in the quiet, now lonely apartment, and worked on "rudolph" with tears in his eyes. Barbara cried with joy over his handmade gift on Christmas morning.
Shortly after, Bob was asked to an employee holiday party at Montgomery Ward. He didn't want to go, but his office associates insisted. When Bob finally agreed, he took with him the poem and read it to the crowd. First, the noisy throng listened with laughter and gaiety. Then they became silent, and at the end, broke into spontaneous applause. That was in 1938.
By Christmas of 1947, some 6 million copies of the booklet had been given away or sold, making Rudoph one of the most widely distributed book in the world. the demand for Rudolph sponsored products increased so much in variety and number that educators and historians predicted Rudolph would come to occupy a permanent place in the Christmas legend.
Through his years of unhapiness, the tragedy of his first wife's death and his ultimate success with Rudolph, Bob May has captured a sense of serenity. And as each Christmas rolls around, he recalls with thankfulness the night when his daughter Barbara's question inspired him to write the poem that closes with these lines.: "But Rudolph was bashful, despite being a hero."
