Last 4th of July, we had the amazing opportunity to watch Gail Halvorsen, also known as the Candy Bomber do a fly over Orem and drop some candy. During the Berlin Airlift, he flew a cargo aircraft to drop supplies in Berlin. One day when he was sight seeing, he noticed some German children lined up at the fence to the airstrip and realized that they didn't have anything that the US air force didn't supply. He gave the children a stick of gum that they broke into little pieces and shared. The kids who didn't get gum, sniffed the wrapper. He decided that he would drop candy to the kids out of his cargo plane and told the kids they would know it was him because he would wiggle his wings as he was approaching.
He used his ration to get candy and attached them to handkerchiefs to drop to the kids. As it became more well know, candy makers and people all over the U.S. sent him supplies and more pilots were able to get in on the operation. They dropped over 23 tons of chocolate, gum and candies all over Berlin. This wasn't the end of his career, he ended up doing a lot of other amazing things and was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal as well as numerous other awards.
When we saw his plane, he was 95 years old and it was going to be his last candy drop.
It was really inspiring to be watch a part of history reenacted. The day was pretty hot and there was a huge crowd of people.
Anya and Emma went into the fenced area to try to get a piece of candy. Emma probably would have gotten a piece, but Anya got stampeded and she sacrificed her chance at getting candy to protect her sister. In the process, her flip flops got broken.
While we were waiting to meet back up together, Kaitlin and Brandon had some fun taking pictures.
Afterwards, we took a picture of Kaitlin with one of the parachutes that I asked some random guy if we could just snap a picture for memory's sake. Mike thought I was being weird, but it was all for the sake of posterity so it was worth a little social awkwardness. :)
No comments:
Post a Comment