I get asked all of the time, "How do you think up stories to write about each week?" Well, I must admit, there are times when I can't even think what I want to cook for dinner that evening let alone think of something to write about.
But thankfully when those times of writer's block happen, my readers come to my rescue. Sometimes it's through an email forward of a story they just wanted to share or an email about a story that they think I might find interesting to write about. When I receive their emails, I do some digging around on the internet to get all of the facts and then write the story in my own words.
This story that I'm sharing today happened to come from a reader's email forward. Thank you Sherry.
If you recall, my favorite Christmas story is that of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. I never thought about it being anything other than just a story until I received Sherry's email.
The story of Rudolph was created by 34-year old Robert May in 1939. May worked for Montgomery Ward as a copywriter. Through my research, I found a couple of different versions of why May created the story. One version was that May created the story to give comfort to his 4-year old daughter Barbara because May's wife was dying of cancer. The other version was that Montgomery Ward asked May to create a storybook to give out to visitors during the Christmas season.
Whatever the real reason was, during the time May was creating the story his wife Evelyn was dying of cancer and May would test his story of Rudolph out on their 4-year old daughter Barbara.
Because of Evelyn's cancer treatment, May was penniless and he and Barbara lived in a two room apartment in Chicago. Evelyn died just a few days before Christmas.
It wasn't hard for May to come up with the story of Rudolph because May based the story on his own childhood. May was often taunted by other children for being shy, small and slight and was called names to horrible to mention.
May wrote the story about the misfit reindeer, the story was published and Montgomery Ward distributed more than 2 million copies of the booklet in 1939 with a total of 6 million copies by 1946.
Since May was an employee of Montgomery Ward at the time, they held the copyright and he received no royalties. Deeply in debt, May was able to persuade Montgomery Ward's corporate president to give him the copyright in January 1947.
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer went on to print commercially in 1947. May's brother-in-law, songwriter Johnny Marks, created lyrics and a melody for a song about Rudolph. Dinah Shore and Bing Crosby turned down recording requests for Rudolph. However, Gene Autry, the singing cowboy, recorded Rudolph in 1949 and sold more than two million copies that year. It became the best-selling song of all time, second only to White Christmas.
The TV special, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was produced in 1964, narrated by Burl Ives and has been a popular hit each year since.
May worked at Montgomery Ward until his retirement in 1971 and thanks to his creation of Rudolph, he went from being penniless to living a comfortable lifestyle until his death in 1976.
Donna Hunter Glenn is a weekly columnist for the Houston Home Journal and Warner Robins Times Newspapers and is the principal decorator and owner of Addressing Rooms Interior Decorating and Home Staging in Warner Robins, GA.
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