An Artist for a Dad: The Candy Bomber

During the Berlin airlift of 1948 one pilot became famous as “The Candy Bomber" by dropping small parachutes of candy to German children as he was about to land his plane.  When my kids were little the pilot, Gail Halversen was interviewed on the radio about his experience. Interestingly enough, now long retired, he lived some 20 minutes from us. I wanted my kids to learn about this guy and what he did for those German children.  So the night of the radio interview, we all gathered around the receiver to listen to the show. Usually after such gatherings I would give out treats. But for this gathering I had something special planned.

I had made some parachutes out of plastic shopping bags and attached them to a separate bundle of candy.  Next I got some sound effect music of a prop plane as if it were swooping overhead. Once the radio show was over I made this announcement. "I have been in contact with The Candy Bomber and he told me he wants to bomb our house because you guys listened to the show. In fact he will be here, flying over in about 5 minutes.  Lets all look out the front window and see if we can see the parachutes!”

I had a player set up at the garage door that threw the sound of the plane, bouncing it off the neighbors house so it was hard to hear where it was coming from.  As the kids were looking out the open window I had it cued for my wife to turn on the sound.  As the sound came to it’s climax I tossed the 5 parachutes off the house.  As they came floating down the kids ran out of the house to collect the candy on the front lawn.  It was fun for me to peak over the side from my high perch and see them excitedly pick up the treasures. The best and most rewarding part for me was when my third oldest son, Ricki, picked up his parachute and shot a smiley glance up to see me, his look and expression as if to say, "I see you dad!" Here is a snippet of the sound effect:

When asked about what happened, "Did you hear the plane and did you by chance see it?”, my second youngest, who had a vivid imagination of his own, said he saw the plane, saw the door open and the guy toss out the bundles.  In the years that passed the kids would say to me, “Dad can you ask the candy bomber to come by our house?"  I would get on the phone and say "Hello Candy Bomber? Can you come by my house and drop candy some time?  Yes, my kids were asking.  Oh, this Friday at 5?  That will be great, we will look out for you."

It was fun to have our own unknown.  Most people have Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy.  Linus had The Great Pumpkin.  We had The Candy Bomber.  The older kids knew it was me but my youngest didn’t find out until she was 9 that the Candy Bomber wasn’t real.  One day she came in asking about the Candy Bomber and I said something like, "oh, that was me didn’t you know the Candy Bomber isn’t real?" What! It was a fun time for me as a dad to come up with creative ways to make my kids' lives more interesting.  Without a doubt the Candy Bomber is one of them.