Inspirational/Good-feeling

[AvastMH]

[Randi]

With video calls and an army of volunteers, this 15-year-old is battling pandemic loneliness in nursing homes

[AvastMH]

With video calls and an army of volunteers, this 15-year-old is battling pandemic loneliness in nursing homes

It's so lovely to hear news of a youngster making this fruitful effort.

[Michael]

[Randi]

World War II-era ‘Candy Bomber’ turns 100. Those who caught his candy — now in their 80s — say thanks.

It was the summer of 1948 when U.S. Air Force pilot Gail “Hal” Halvorsen noticed children clustered around a barbed-wire fence watching military planes at Tempelhof airfield in Berlin.

World War II had ended, and Halvorsen was part of an air mission to deliver food and fuel to desperate Berliners after the Soviet Union had blocked land and water access to areas of the country, leaving millions without access to basic goods.

Halvorsen, then 27, decided to park his plane and say hello to the kids at the fence.

“I saw right away that they had nothing and they were hungry,” he recalled. “So I reached into my pocket and pulled out all that I had: two sticks of gum.”

Halvorsen tore the Wrigley’s Spearmint gum into small strips — one for each child, he said. Then he made the kids a promise: He would return the next day to drop a load of chocolate bars from the sky.

“I told them that I’d ‘wiggle’ my wings so they’d know which pilot had the goods,” he said. “Then I went back to the base and asked all the guys to pool their candy rations for the drop.”

Following his first sweet mission — hundreds of Hershey chocolate bars were wrapped in parachutes made of handkerchiefs — Halvorsen returned again and again during the 15-month humanitarian airlift.

...

Christel Jonge Vos, who now lives in Keizer, Ore., said she was never able to catch a chocolate parachute because the teenage boys in Berlin ran ahead of her.

“But that was not important to me or the other kids who did not get one,” said Vos, now 86. “We knew there was an American pilot called the Candy Bomber who cared about us. He laid the ground stone to the fact that enemies could become friends in Berlin.”

...

“I was 14 and had seen too much evil to believe in anything good, when the Candy Bomber made a place for himself in the heart of every West Berlin child,” [Dagmar Snodgrass] said.

[Hanibal94]

We were taught about the Berlin airlift in school. Pretty amazing stuff!

[Michael]

[sleepyowl]

Thanks, Randi. I just shared it with both daughters, the elder one was just learning about the Berlin Blockade for her exams. I remember first hearing about it on a BBC radio program, The World That Came In From The Cold, but the German lady who was recalling it called them "Raisin Bombers".

[Randi]

Glad it was useful!

When I was little, I remember getting little boxes of raisins as candy

[Randi]

Ice-cream store with special-needs employees overcomes pandemic’s business obstacles

Tom Landis was 46 when he gave all he had to open a business he felt called to run. On Dec. 26, 2015, the ice cream store Howdy Homemade opened in Dallas, employing mostly people with special needs, from servers to cashiers to managers. “Howdy,” as Landis calls it, thrived as locals praised the store’s mission and liked the ice cream, too.
...
The store is now open again and appears poised to become a national operation. Potential franchisers have popped up in Asheville, N.C., El Paso and Las Cruces, N.M. Landis and his vice president, Coleman Jones, who has Down syndrome, took a road trip last week for meetings in San Antonio about putting Howdy ice cream in the massive H-E-B grocery chain and in Austin about opening a Howdy store on campus at the University of Texas, Landis’s alma mater.

[AvastMH]

Feels like watching the sunrise does this story, Randi. How brilliant to have a whole store, and now chain, being run by folk who would have had no part in it in older times because they would not have been thought capable. Just shows what can be achieved with help and determination. I bet it makes that ice-cream taste all the better

[Michael]

[Randi]

Trailblazing triathlete isn’t letting Down syndrome prevent him from becoming an Ironman

[AvastMH]

It seems strange to think that, not that many years ago, there was no reporting of sport for disabled athletes. I can't recall which event it is but one major event is about to be set up with disabled and abled games being run together. Perhaps the 'paralympics' will vanish as they become part of the Olympics.

[Randi]

She is a former addict and prisoner. She was just elected to the state house in Washington.

[AvastMH]

She is a former addict and prisoner. She was just elected to the state house in Washington.

What an inspiring story, Randi. Just shows what can be done when determination is met with opportunity to change to a better course.

[Michael]

[Randi]

A teen with autism lost motivation for his walks to the post office. So strangers are sending cards to his P.O. Box

[Michael]

[Morgan]

Great story to start the day!