Patriotic Weekend

This weekend was very busy for our family, but also memory building. Jared and Leah participated in our Stake Choir and joined up with a community band Saturday and Sunday for a concert honoring heroes. One of those heroes was Gail Halverson, known as the WWII "Candy Bomber". After WWII the Soviet Union blockaded Berlin to try to force the German people to join communism through starvation. The Allied forces responded with food airlift drops for 15 months. Brother Halverson was one of those pilots. He remarked that the German people told him they may not have enough to eat, but they would be alright because freedom was more important than food. He was very impressed with the German people. After one drop he noticed children standing around the fence watching the food drops. He wanted to give them something and when he searched his pockets all he found was two sticks of gum. He gave these to the children (about 30 of them) who carefully tore off pieces of the gum so that nearly all of them got a piece. Then they passed around the wrapper so that they could all at least smell the aroma of gum. They were so grateful and never asked for anything that he decided he needed to do more. He started dropping candy to the children. The children knew he was coming because he would "wiggle" the plane wings before making the drop. He became known to them as "Uncle Wiggly Wings". Saturday morning our kids got to participate in a reenactment of the candy drops. One of the original Berlin children came as a surprise visitor to finally meet and thank Gail Halverson. She's spent much of her life trying to track him down so she could thank him. Leah and Kaitlyn were also very happy to meet the "Candy Bomber" in person. Kaitlyn held out her arms to him, and Gail Halverson picked her up in a hug and then said, "What is your mother feeding you?!" He is 88 years old. I was talking with Leah and Kaitlyn about their experience meeting him and they remarked, "he really is good to children, isn't he". The band and choir did a tribute to all the branches of the armed forces and people were invited to stand if they had a family member who had served. Leah was thrilled to stand and honor PapPap, Grandpa Nelson, and Grandpa Pace. We sang along with the songs for the army and navy. I'm posting video of the number that both Leah & Jared participated in though the quality is poor. I didn't know how to zoom in, so you can't see them (though Leah is the child in the red dress in the front). The sound also got washed out and doesn't sound as full as it did last night, but you'll get the general idea.