Gail Seymour Halvorsen (1920 - 2022)

Born 10 Oct 1920 in Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah, United States

Ancestors

Husband of Alta (Jolley) Halvorsen — married 25 Apr 1949 in Clark, Nevada, United States

Died 16 Feb 2022 at age 101 in Provo, Utah, Utah, United States

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Biography

Gail Halvorsen is Notable.

Gail Halvorsen was a centenarian, living to age 101.

Colonel Gail Halvorsen served in the United States Army Air Forces in World War II
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Gail was born in 1920, in Salt Lake City, Utah. He grew up, poor, during the Great Depression. He always wanted to be a pilot. He earned his private pilot's license in 1941 before he joined the Civil Air Patrol.

In 1942 he joined the US Army Air Force. He flew C-47s and C-54s during the Berlin airlift. According to the Halvorsen website, he had mixed feeling about helping our former enemy. He changed his attitude when he met a group of children at the Templehof airport. He offered them two pieces of gum that he had, broken in half. The children were excited to get the gum, smelling the wrapper that the gum came in. He promised to drop enough gum for all of the kids the next day as he flew, wiggling the wings of the airplane as he flew over the airport. He started doing this regularly using his own candy ration, with handkerchiefs as parachutes to carry them to the ground. Gail Halvorsen did not have approval from superior officers to do this. Soon other pilots began doing the same thing and their efforts became known as, "Operation Little Vittles." He saw this as a way to raise morale in Berlin. Over time he became a national hero, known as "The Berlin Candy Bomber" "Uncle Wiggly Wings" and "The Chocalate Flier." He won many awards for his operation, including the Congressional Gold Medal.

After an Associated Press story appeared under the headline, "Lollipop Bomber Flies over Berlin" a wave of candy and handkerchief donations followed.

The airlift began in June 1948 in an ambitious plan to feed and supply West Berlin after the Soviets blockaded the city in an attempt to squeeze the United States, Britain and France, out of the enclave within Soviet occupied eastern Germany. Allied pilots flew 278,000 flights to Berlin carrying about 2.3 million tons of food, medicine, and other supplies. In May of 1949 the Soviets lifted their barricades. The airlift continued for several months just in case they changed their minds.

Halvorsen went on to make similar drops of candy in Boznia, Albania, Japan, Guam, and Iraq. After his military career, he helped develop reusable manned spacecraft at the Directorate of Space and Technology. He later served as Assistant Dean of Student Life at Brigham Young University.

He married, 1949, Alta Jolley. They served as missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints from 1986-1987 in London, England. They were missionaries in St. Petersburg, Russia from 1995 to 1997.

He continued to make his candy drops annually for Christmas at the Wright Memorial in Kill Devil Hills, NC. He started this in 1999. In 2022 since he was unable to make the trip, his son, Edmond Halvorsen, filled in for him.

During the ceremony in 2019, that marked the 116th anniversary of the Wright Brothers history making flight, Gail Halvorsen was inducted into the Paul E. Garber First Flight Shrine at the Wright Brothers National Memorial.^[1]

He passed away in 2022.^[2]

Sources

1. ↑ https://www.outerbanksvoice.com/2022/02/17/gail-halvorsen-beloved-candy-bomber-passes-at-101/
2. ↑ https://findagrave.com/memorial/236830588

• https://familysearch.org/tree/person/details/G63P-H74
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gail_Halvorsen