By Carla Kelly 

    We met Mary Lynn Chino in Ogden, Utah. She always wanted to be a rodeo queen. Mary Lynn was OK-looking, but no rodeo queen and not young, either. I’m not even sure she knew how to sit on a horse. It happened to be one of those childhood fantasies that never morphed into reality.
    I remember laughing with her about beauty pageants, and those starry-eyed chicks who tell the emcee they want world peace.
    They’re right, though. World peace wouldn’t be a bad idea; not at all. My apologies, ladies. What you’re wishing for is the best idea of all time.
    If you were to ask them, I think my children’s favorite Christmas story is one about Gail Halvorsen, a U.S. Air Force pilot during the Berlin Airlift in 1948. We came across it in the Deseret News, and it found a place in our collection of stories we read during the Christmas season, when the Kelly kids were growing up.
    Halvorsen piloted a C-54 cargo plane, one of many transporting food, coal, everything, to blockaded West Berlin, which was surrounded by Soviet troops eager to swallow up the still-democratic part of the city. Around the clock for more than 18 months, cargo planes landed every 90 seconds at Tempelhof Airport, as the free world remained determined to deny West Berlin to communism.
    Berlin was a city of two million people, so the task was nearly impossible. Still, West Berliners endured starvation and deprivation to remain democratic.
    The Airlift was grinding, but Halvorsen took a few moments once to sight-see around Tempelhof, where he noticed a group of ragged kids watching the city’s lifelines land, disgorge supplies, and take off. Halvorsen approached the group and tried out his halting German. Some kids knew a little English, so he spent a few moments chatting and unable to overlook their starving condition.
    As he left, he was struck by the fact that no one had asked him for anything. He knew that in other areas, kids gathered around G.I.s for gum and chocolate. Not these children; they were too defeated. Halvorsen checked his pockets and found only two sticks of gum, which he broke into tiny pieces and handed out as far as they would go. The kids who didn’t get any were still overjoyed to smell the wrappers.
    Disturbed, Halvorsen decided to do what he could on his next flight over Berlin. He got some candy, tied it to three pocket handkerchief parachutes, and he dropped them out of his flare tube on the approach to Tempelhof. He also wiggled his plane’s wings, so the kids would know it was the Candy Bomber.
    Word got out. Halvorsen was afraid his commanding officer would be upset, but he wasn’t. Instead, the general saw the morale potential for Berlin. Journalists dubbed Halverson “Uncle Wiggly Wings.” By Christmas, Halvorsen and fellow pilots had dropped some 90,000 candy parachutes over Berlin.
    It was called Operation Little Vittles. Candy came from all over the United States. Eventually, 6,500 pounds of candy – too much for the flare tubes – was landed at Tempelhof and distributed at Christmas parties for children throughout the city.
    In all, more than 23 tons of candy was dropped from cargo planes for the children. Berliners never forgot. Years later, when Halvorsen returned to West Berlin as base commander at Tempelhof, he was greeted as a national hero. A school was named after him. The U.S. Air Force has named a transport plane for him, and an air transport award.
    Germans still remember. During the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Halvorsen, a spry 82, carried the German team’s placard into the Olympic stadium.
I like Halvorsen’s words better than mine. He had to fly on Christmas Eve in 1948 to Berlin, which went into blackout mode at nightfall:
    “As I left the West German base for the last of my 450-mile round trips that night, fireworks exploded around me. But in West Berlin, there was only darkness. On Christmas Eve, it was eerie.
    “What a people! I thought. Surrounded as they were, an island in an ocean of Russian troops, they fought on, living on half-rations. Just weeks before, during a general election, 99 out of 100 West Berliners had voted dramatically against acceptance of Communism. How could I be anything but grateful for having known these people?”
    That was 1948. Sixty years later, world peace still can’t come a minute too soon. Beauty queens of the world, thanks for the occasional reminder. We need it.